At first glance, Greek, the chamber opera from Mark-Anthony Turnage, looks like an omnibus episode of EastEnders.
At first glance, Greek, the chamber opera from Mark-Anthony Turnage, looks like an omnibus episode of EastEnders. And it’s just as entertaining. Opening with expletives that perhaps kept the usual well-heeled opera crowd away, the plot whips along at a dizzying pace, as the troubled Eddy keeps all the sex and violence in the family.
This Music Theatre Wales touring production is certainly timely. “There’s a plague on,” as the darkly comic libretto from Steven Berkoff puts it, and violence of the disaffected 1980s rules the streets.
But of course, dressed in a tracksuit and draped in the flag of St George, the impressive Marcus Farnsworth (Eddy) looks familiar long before images from the latest UK riots appear on the show’s screens.
Turnage makes full use of his 18-piece orchestra. Occupying more of the small stage than the singers, they act as chorus too -- beating batons on riot shields and applauding the hero at his triumph.
Even in this early work (1988) Turnage pulls new sounds out of his instrumentation. He leaves the violin out altogether -- a viola leading the bass-weighted ensemble instead -- and colours things to the sound of lament. Characteristically, the cockney vernacular of the production finds its echo in his use of jazz and film music references.
The balance and diction from the singers is great -- only at the slaying of the Sphinx are words lost to sound.
The action, played out like a comic strip along the front of the stage, verges towards physical theatre -- probably very familiar to recent Fringe audiences, but a welcome change in the opera world.
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