Hauntingly operatic tale of yearning in the city
THEATRE
CARMEN DISRUPTION
Almeida, N1 IN A nameless European city, five apparently unconnected people circle one another. They are rootless and lonely, and their fractured stories, presented directly to the audience, dwell on yearning and the slick vacuity of modern urban life.
Simon Stephens’s play is an audaciously skewed take on Georges Bizet’s great opera Carmen. The title character is no longer a beautiful gypsy girl, but instead a rent boy. Played with slippery swagger by Jack Farthing, he’s both vain and ethereal. Meanwhile Sharon Small is The Singer, who’s constantly on the go as she performs Bizet’s most famous role around the world. She has two suitcases, one of them stuffed with medicines, and her neuroses are amplified rather than dampened by a day-to-day regime of soulless luxury.
The bullfighter Escamillo is reimagined as a psychotic futures trader, superbly portrayed by John Light. Don José, a soldier in Bizet’s original, is now a woman (Noma Dumezweni) who drives a cab and strives to reconnect with her son. Finally, innocent orphan Micaela is an anguished student (Katie West) who is in a state of despair following the collapse of a relationship.
All the characters are nomads, reliant on social media and smart technology to compensate for the loveless nature of day-to-day reality. Their journeys through the city are haunted by the spirit of Carmen (seductively embodied by mezzosoprano Viktoria Vizin). Two cellists perform fragments of the opera’s score, and there are other eerie, carefully chosen musical references — to Roy Orbison, Kraftwerk and Daft Punk.
The centrepiece of Lizzie Clachan’s design is a life-size model of a bull, expelling what seem to be its dying breaths. We’re obliged to walk past it as we take our seats, and it haunts the 90 minutes that follow — a connection to the bullfighting themes of Bizet’s opera, but also a hulking image of capitalism’s last gasp. Even if the symbolism is laid on a little thick here, Stephens’s writing has rarely felt sharper and Michael Longhurst’s poetic production achieves moments of startling intimacy.