A Night at the Chinese Opera, Theatre Royal, Glasgow
A tank's gun drum looms into vista in the first few proceedings of Scottish Opera's freshly production of Judith Weir's first opera house, sweeping a porcelain vase to the ground. A Night at the Chinese Opera may be localise in 14th-century provincial Nationalist China when the area was threatened by Kublai Khan, simply, as the matter of fact blending of historical periods and styles in Lee Blakeley's staging (with designs by Jean-Marc Puissant) implies, repression and savagery take in been constants in the country's history. Such concerns, though, ar truly hardly a backcloth to Weir's wry, witty and poisonous nightshade drama, with its neat nesting of i tale, the Chinese opera performed in the instant play, inside another, and whose story lines tellingly converge. Though get-go performed in 1987, this is the work's stage premiere in Weir's native Scotland, and after to a greater extent than 20 days, it is still the perfective tense unification of her text and music that dazzles, with not a gesture wasted.
With Singan Jonathan Edwards conducting, that deadly lucidness is terrifically conveyed. The Scots Opera Orchestra shows how preciously every greenback is, and row make out crosswise so sharply, the English surtitles are to a greater extent than unremarkably redundant. Just the score's economy creates its own problems for a director. Blakeley's knockabout staging of the Chinese opera is deftly hilarious, with Rebekah de Pont Davies outstanding as the leader of the acting troupe. In that location ar approximately alright performances elsewhere, too (Duke of Edinburgh Salmon's alright turns as the watcher world Health Organization overlooks the Mongolian invasion and as a imitation Italian Marco Polo; Fiona Kimm's cameos as a housekeeper and hag), merely the continuity of the outer acts does non constantly register quite neatly as it should.· Farther performances on Saturday, and May 20 & 22. Box office: 0870 060 6647. And then touring.
