The Little Match Girl 2016

by Hlemut Lachenmann

Based on Hans Christiand Anderssen

Directed by Phelim McDermot and Mark Down
Spoleto Festival

Lachenmann's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s sobering tale, in his trademark "music concrete instrumentale" style, is astonishingly evocative, full of clicks, crackles, knocks, and hisses, under the baton of Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities John Kennedy.  

The story depicts a poor match seller girl on a snowy street at Christmas, lighting matches for warmth. In the light of the matches she is transported to happier times and places.

Lachenmann creates a frigid atmosphere — animating the match girl’s world and contemplating the coldness of a society that would let a child freeze.

We created a shadow staging, casting giant interweaving shadows to make a show that almost isn’t there, lit by the strike of a match and performed at the speed of scissors beneath 106 members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra elevated on a platform and encircling the audience. 

Critics were divided...

"The action of the story was told via the brilliant puppetry work of Mark Down, Ruth Paton and Fiona Clift, who utilized something of a Balinese shadow puppet approach with a few twists... The visual design painted a dark, horrific world"

National Opera Association

"Mark Down and Phelim McDermott devised an ingenious shadow-puppetry production, including cutouts of text fragments"

Wall Street Journal

"it was mostly tedious"

Wall Street Journal

"the audience loved it"

New York Times

"I can honestly say will never forget it"

Charlston City Paper