Kieran Rayner & Gamal Khamis present:
What If?
A moving, entertaining and ever-changing story with song at its soul – where you decide what happens next!
What If? is a play and song recital combined – with a twist. At pivotal moments in the story, you – the audience – vote to decide what the protagonist should do, changing the plot and musical programme.
Watch the Official Trailer
About the Show
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure + Classical Song
Set in 1914, What If? features multiple characters acted and sung by baritone Kieran Rayner, with piano and sound effects played by Gamal Khamis. Our story explores love, loss, friendship, war, and women’s suffrage, all while giving the audience agency over the direction of the narrative.
Whichever paths are picked, we guarantee a fulfilling and uplifting experience: an entertaining script connecting a rich selection of German and English songs, including Schubert, Robert and Clara Schumann, Ethel Smyth, Butterworth, and Finzi, alongside contemporary composers.
We developed What If? with the support of Samling Institute for Young Artists and the Hugo Burge Foundation. It was selected for a highly-contested ‘Samling and Song’ residency, during which we worked intensively with actor and dramaturg James Garnon to sculpt the show into its final form. What If? promises a new art song experience: an exciting combination of traditional song recital and interactive storytelling.
This show has grown out of our partnership as an established song duo, Kieran’s experience as a writer, opera singer and actor, and Gamal’s work on recording projects which combine song and narrative. Together, we are creating a new way for audiences to experience the dramatic power of song.
Premiere Performance: 11 November 2024
Date
11 November, 2024
Time
6:30pm
Location
Royal Over-Seas League, London SW1A 1LR
Meet the Performers
Kieran Rayner
Baritone, Writer/Creator
Kieran Rayner is a London-based New Zealand baritone. Engagements include Junius The Rape of Lucretia (Royal Opera House); Escamillo Carmen, Billy Bone Captain Blood’s Revenge (Norwich Opera Festival); Sorcerer Dido & Aeneas (Waterperry Festival Opera); Frankie 1944: Home Fires (Tête-â-Tête); Papageno Die Zauberflöte, Silvio I Pagliacci (Festival Opera NZ); Gasparo Rita, Aeneas Dido & Aeneas (IF Opera); Dancaïre Carmen, Forester The Cunning Little Vixen (Longborough Festival Opera); The Prince Fantasio (Garsington Opera); Ucello BambinO (Scottish Opera/Improbable); Marcello La Bohème (Mid Wales Opera); Crespel/Luther Tales of Hoffmann (English Touring Opera); Eisenstein Die Fledermaus (NAFA Singapore); Pierre Lafitte Cabildo (Wiltons Music Hall), Figaro Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Devon Opera); plus concert solos at Snape Maltings, the Royal Albert Hall and Buckingham Palace. As a writer-performer, he created interactive play/recital Wohin – Where To? for the 2022 Aldeburgh Festival, and won a Samling Arts Residency to develop the sequel, What If?. Winner of the 2022 Sing Finzi Competition, International Handel Competition Finalist and Wigmore Hall Song Competition Semifinalist. Previous Young Artist with Britten Pears Arts, Independent Opera, Verbier Festival, Samling Arts, Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, and NZ Opera Emerging Artist 2012-13. A Royal College of Music and Victoria/NZSM graduate.
Gamal Khamis
Piano, Music Direction
Gamal Khamis first performed at the Wigmore Hall at the age of ten, and he has since appeared at Carnegie Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Sage Gateshead, as well as all over Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Gamal completed his formal education at the Royal College of Music, after gaining a degree in Mathematics from Imperial College London. He has won major prizes at the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition and the Ferrier Awards, and he has worked with many of Britain’s leading composers, including Thomas Adès and Mark-Anthony Turnage. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3 In Tune, where he has performed alongside Sol Gabetta, Vilde Frang and Erwin Schrott. Recent engagements have included concertos by Rachmaninov and R Schumann with orchestras across the UK. Gamal was the inaugural Finzi Trust Scholar at Iain Burnside’s Ludlow English Song Weekend in 2021, and he regularly performs at the Flatirons Chamber Music Festival in Colorado, USA. Gamal is a Samling Artist, a member of the award-winning Lipatti Piano Quartet, and he has recently joined the RCM Junior Department as a Chamber Music Coach. His disc of works by Richard Strauss alongside the actor Christopher Kent was released in 2022 by SOMM Recordings and has received glowing reviews.
Praise for WOHIN – WHERE TO? – forerunner to this project:
“I think the format is absolutely brilliant… the fact that the audience are involved in choosing really brings it to life for them, and the fact that it fits together whichever order choices are made is a lovely twist, which I enjoyed enormously.”
– Audience member at Britten Pears Arts Aldeburgh Festival
“The experiment showed what new forms of performance are possible when musical and acting skills are combined with an enterprising spirit and the joy of communicating with the audience. The song recital is far from dead, as culture sceptics would have us believe.”
– Review extract from German Newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(translated by Lotte Betts-Dean)
Supported By:
