MUSIC REVIEW : Inspired Nonsense From Royal Northern

Sometimes a little nonsense is good for the soul.

So it was Wednesday night in Bing Theatre at USC, where visiting students from England’s Royal Northern College of Music presented Harrison Birtwistle’s 1969 dramatic pastoral “Down by the Greenwood Side” as part of the UK/LA Festival.

Essentially an avant-garde setting of a traditional English mummers’ play with the old Scottish ballad “The Cruel Mother” passing through the action like a ship in the night, “Down by the Greenwood Side,” with a text by Michael Nyman, uses modern music cacophony for comic purposes.

Most of the 40 minutes of action is spoken dialogue, with roles for such characters as Father Christmas (as master of ceremonies), St. George (here, played as a fop) and Dr. Blood, who brags that he can cure such ailments as “wind in the knees” and “bellyache in the big tom toe.”

With just such low humor, with medieval jousts on hobbyhorses, with wonderfully silly costumes (one character removes his green head as if it were a hat in order to get down to work), “Greenwood” turns out to be exactly the kind of inspired nonsense that only the British seem to create. And Birt-wistle’s acerbic music, for a mixed ensemble of nine (the conductor offers a prefatory burp before they begin), far from keeping an abstract distance, adds gas to the giddiness: It seems the musical embodiment of the tomfoolery action.

The playing, the singing (a fluid Mary Hitch in “The Cruel Mother” role), the costumes, the dreamy, autumnal set design and especially the spirited acting were all top-notch.

On the first half of this music theater program (repeated tonight and Sunday afternoon), the Manchester-based collegians offered William Walton’s 1967 “extravaganza” “The Bear,” a one-act, three-singer, small instrumental ensemble setting of a Chekhov vaudeville. Walton’s musical pastiche method works well here, particularly in capturing the coy battle of the sexes that ensues when creditor and debtor suddenly find themselves in love. The solid, fresh voices in the main roles are Sarah Castle and Craig Smith.