Opera & Theatre by Mark Brown

Anthropocene

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

FOUR STARS

At Hackney Empire, London, February 7-9

We are, contrary to Trumpian climate change denial, living in the epoch known as the anthropocene (that is, the first period in the life of our planet in which human activity has become the primary force in shaping the Earth’s climate). In this world premiere for Scottish Opera, librettist Louise Welsh and composer Stuart MacRae approach the subject from an audaciously dramatic and bleakly humorous perspective.

The opera is set onboard an Arctic icebreaker (named, sardonically, the Anthropocene) which is carrying scientists, a journalist, the ship’s owner (a wealthy businessman and ambitious patron of science) Harry King and his daughter. The ship has become icebound, thanks to the delayed return of a research party.

So far, so naturalistic. The narrative then takes a startling and brilliant turn into the realms of primordial myth and ancient tragedy; elements that are rendered all the more powerful by being placed in juxtaposition with both the contemporary setting of the piece and the striking modernity of MacRae’s music.

The research party was delayed by the extraordinary find of a female human body, perfectly preserved in the Arctic ice. When she is brought back to the ship, the unfortunate woman, contrary to the laws of science, returns to life.

This character (known only as Ice) was, it transpires, a human sacrifice in a long past survival ritual. Her very existence inspires, variously and catastrophically, avaricious opportunism, scientific fascination and existential terror among the denizens of the Anthropocene.

The ensuing drama (in Welsh’s fabulously bold, impressively sharp libretto) plunges the characters headlong into a conflictual tragedy that is (in its moral weight and its metaphorical thrust) worthy of Euripides or Aeschylus. MacRae’s incisive score is, simultaneously, urgent, premonitory and (in its modernist dissonance) disconcertingly uncertain.

Soprano Jennifer France, who gives an enigmatically timeless, vocally penetrating, yet undeniably human performance as Ice, leads a universally superb cast. Designer Samal Blak’s set and costumes (the clean whites of modern technology contrasting with the stuff of human and animal life, and death) provide the perfect visual accompaniment to a memorable and frighteningly timely opera.

Touching The Void

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

FOUR STARS

Until February 16

You wait ages for a drama of crisis in a frozen wasteland, and then, like “momentous” parliamentary Brexit debates, two come along at once. While Scottish Opera take us to the Arctic Circle, Touching The Void, David Greig’s stage adaptation of the powerful memoir by Joe Simpson, transports us to the great mountain Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes.

A fictionalised “fantasia” of Simpson’s catastrophic experience on the mountain (in which, his leg broken and numerous bones shattered, he was separated from his climbing partner Simon Yates) begins in the Clachaig Inn in Glencoe. There it is that Joe’s sister, Fiona, meets Simon (the excellent Edward Hayter) and his irritatingly undiplomatic fellow traveller Richard (a hippy writer played with fine, comic pathos by Patrick McNamee) for a wake for Joe, who is assumed dead.

The character of Sarah (played with great humour, energy and infectious feeling by Fiona Hampton) is a clever creation. She is, simultaneously, an entirely convincing representation of personal grief, yet also an empathetic Everywoman channelling the curiosity of the non-climbing majority who strive to grasp why people risk their lives on the world’s highest mountains.

In the first half, Simon attempts to explain the exhilarations of climbing by means of demonstration. The symbolic use of chairs and other barroom paraphernalia is somewhat heavy-handed, highlighting the shortcomings of live drama, relative to film, where such action is concerned.

However, in the irresistible second half, director Tom Morris’s staging (a co-production by the Lyceum, Bristol Old Vic and others) plays directly to the psychological and emotional strengths of theatre. Josh Williams is utterly compelling as the stranded Joe, as, with barely believable resilience, he descends the mountain and the play reaches a dramatic peak.