The Choral (12A)

The Choral is a quiet and consistent pleasure: a deeply felt drama which assigns actual passion to the music of Elgar and leaves us with a heartbeat of wit, poignancy and common sense.

With a brand new original screenplay by Alan Bennett (his first in 40 years), it is set during the first world war in a mill town in northern England where the choral society has appointed a new choirmaster, Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes).

As Guthrie and his motley society grow, they struggle to land on a choral composition to perform. Too many of the great composers are (gasp!) German. Eventually, the group agrees to mount a performance of Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Geronitus, a blunt good vs. evil parable that evolves as the group does.

The expected bonding follows: romances take root, more than a few members of the society get tangled up in positively shocking relations, and hearts are broken. But music and song and the possibility of coming together to make something beautiful and potent, if even for a single performance, pushes the society on, just as it pushes The Choral on. Don’t miss.