Stunning to look at but failing to create a unified whole, Vanishing Point’s new Beggar’s Opera adaptation is close to brilliance but achieves only incoherent disappointment.
Kai Fischer has fulfilled his brief in creating a set which depicts a dark future underworld that looks up, as from a sewer, into an beauty-obsessed overworld. Eve Lambert’s costumes, whether future couture or underworld grunge, are evocative of both social strata. Design and costumes sit easily with the anime style of Finn Ross’ video design.
Transforming the beggar narrator into Sandra Sanderson (Rosalind Sydney), a breathy TV reporter works well too, skewing the piece’s mockery towards culture rather than rotten politics. The concept of using a rock band instead of popular tunes is similarly coherent.
Employing A Band Called Quinn as that band, however, is not a success. Muddy lyrics and wafting tunes don’t do their job or fit with the overall scheme.
What really grates, however, is the dialogue. The characters either plod around in gas masks, acting out the plot in some dumb-show, or are given the most banal drivel to speak - ostensibly in time with the music.
James Bryce and Pauline Goldsmith as the Peachums are particularly encumbered, while Victoria Bavister is an underwhelming Polly Peachum. Sandy Grierson, when given space to create character, is excellent. But overall there is nothing here to substantiate the use of a flashing red hazard light on the safety curtain to indicate that what lies behind is dangerous. Potentially dangerous, yes, but without a radical rethink, not at all.
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, September 12-October 3, then touring until October 31
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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