Dark tales tell a story of our time

The Golden Dragon, Sherman Theatre, Cardiff

DECAY of various kinds is relentlessly probed like a dentist dealing with a rotting tooth in this dark and disturbing production by the excellent Music Theatre Wales.

Indeed, the intense pain caused by a decaying tooth in the mouth of The Little One, an illegal worker at a Chinese restaurant called The Golden Dragon, is the starting point of this opera by Peter Eotvos, based on a play by Roland Schimmelpfennig.

The extraction of the tooth and how it ends up in a bowl of soup served at the restaurant is one of a number of interlocking stories told in 21 scenes.

These tales, which are cleverly linked and impressively told by the five singers, explore themes of age, migration, the effects of neoliberalism, multiculturalism, human trafficking and other evils which haunt our world.

The portrayal of the fraught and sometimes cruel relationship between The Granddaughter, The Grandfather and her Boyfriend, and that of the air stewardesses who look from their aircraft in the clouds at refugees on a boat in the ocean below, is relatively straightforward.

Rather more surreal and challenging is the brutal interaction between the Ant and the Cricket, played by mezzo soprano Lucy Schaufer and Tenor Andrew Mackenzie Wicks.

As the opera continues it becomes progressively darker in mood and tone, a shift which is enhanced by the playing of the musicians and the stage lighting.

Wales should be proud to have an pioneering and uncompromising modern voice like Music Theatre Wales to tell tales like this around Europe and the rest of the world.

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