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Opera Review

OperaUpClose update Puccini’s 1850s’ Californian, polka saloon setting to 21st century Soho in La Fanciulla del West. It is directed by Robert Chevara, who also contributes, together with Kfir Yefet, to a hard-edged, and at times, witty libretto. Minnie is the owner of an internet café - in a neat transposition of the ‘pony express’ of the original, where the brooding presence of Olga Urbanskaya, ‘crack whore,’ communicates over the net. The visibility of Skype, message alerts and the tapping out on computer keys add to the sense of isolation, as a group of Eastern European migrant workers sing of home and nostalgia in the opening scene.

The café also serves as bank for the migrants’ money and as a school for Citizenship, towards British nationalisation. In this dog eat dog world, this disembodied café with its orange-backed plastic chairs and discarded card tables is the norm. Here Minnie’s poker-loving guys are all a little in love with her. So when a stranger, an Estonian, by the name of Vik Johnson comes into their midst, their collective feathers are more than ruffled.  

The brooding presence of mafia boss Jack Rock, the re-christened Sherriff Jack Rance, becomes Johnson’s nemesis as the themes of love, redemption and atonement are played out through this ménage, and its chorus of three. Yet in a switch from law enforcer in the original to law breaker, the figure of Jack Rock confuses the lines between moral and amoral behaviour. In this production, everybody belongs to the underbelly. So while his cronies relinquish their emotional hold on Minnie by the end, he is side-lined to a physical presence.  

Yet there are many pluses in this production. All six performers commit to their created world from beginning to end; all are excellent, strong singers, particularly Laura Parfitt as Minnie and the compelling Tom Stoddart as Jack Rock, and all are fine actors, bringing an extra frisson to Puccini’s passionate, melodic score. There is also a good deal of humour: the aging European singer, Ilya Popov’s, screen presence in Act One, replete in seventies’ wig; Minnie’s delight in her ‘little beauties’ from Top Shop, owing much to Dorothy’s infamous red slippers, and the cheeky reference to Lloyd Webber’s Phantom, as Johnson idly plays with a white half mask in Act Two, while the musicians play the melody to The Music of the Night.

This new intimate version, with a cast of six compared to eighteen in the original, is set over three acts: the internet café, Minnie’s bedroom, and an underground car-park. TV screens feature in all three, sometimes wittily, as in dropping into Strictly in the opening scene; sometimes with menace, as in the car park with its black and white, four-way split image. Minnie’s bedroom in Act Two with the presence of bunk beds, an old boarding school wardrobe and knick-knackery, hint at an infantilised Minnie, complete with Disney Posters and sugar-pink lighting, which is at odds with her Mistress Quickly, gun-toting, motor-bike riding image that scorns whiskey taken with water. Similarly, trying to hide a wounded Johnson, and in the staging of the near subsequent assault of Minnie by Rock on the bunk beds was awkward.

Ultimately, the production, under the musical direction of John Gibbons with set design by Nicolai Hart-Hanson, wins you over. And once you have adjusted to the intimate setting, the wrap-around sound and contemporary, provocative script, it is enjoyable. Puccini’s drive was about breaking down musical barriers whilst seeking challenging settings. In this spirit, OperaUpClose get down and get personal……