WILL STONE is frustrated by a performance that chooses to garble the lyrics and drown the songs in reverb
Latest editorial
Opera review: Carmen, King’s Head theatre, London
Bizet's classic gets an engaging contemporary updating
Fateful encounter: Jose (Roger Paterson) and Carmen (Ellie Edmonds) meet up
[Nick Rutter]
RITA DI SANTO points out the social experience of exploitation and oppression that inform the popular winners at this year’s festival
PETER MASON is tickled by a new book and exhibition that mine the rotten anachronism of the monarchy for laughs
A Nazi zeppelin whodunnit, death amidst detoxification, a twistaholic’s delight, and noir fiction for criminals
STEVE JOHNSON salutes the mellifluous tones and clear-minded political message of a uniquely relevant Birmingham-born singer-songwriter
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
Carmen
King’s Head Theatre, London
BIZET’S Carmen – an opera which explores the tribulations of its eponymous heroine and the two men who vie for her affections – has been stripped down to its bare essentials in this contemporary retelling by Mary Franklin and Ashley Pearson.
In their version, we first meet Carmen (Ellie Edmonds), a low-paid hospital cleaner on a fag break and Jose (Roger Paterson), also toiling on a zero-hours contract. Swiftly becoming interested in each other, after an altercation with their employer they escape from a life of tedium and hit the road.
Then arrives Escamillio (Dan D’Souza), a strapping Arsenal player who falls for Carmen and sets the proverbial cat among the operatic pigeons.
Similar stories
DAVID NICHOLSON is thrilled – and shocked – by an opera that seethes and sizzles with passion and the depraved use of power
PAUL DONOVAN relishes a fascinating exploration of the leading lights of the Labour right in the 1970s
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
MAYER WAKEFIELD salutes a fresh angle on the conflicted soul that led the civil rights movement