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English National Opera takes a bold leap, selecting one of the most uncompromising pieces of 21st-century music theatre for the first new opera staged in its northern base. Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone, which won the Chinese American composer the 2017 Pulitzer prize, tackles human trafficking head on in an allegorical tale of two angels that fall – literally – into the clutches of a dysfunctional couple who hesitate for all of five minutes before deciding to mutilate and exploit them.
For this inaugural production, a collaboration with Factory International and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, they have recruited Kip Williams whose The Picture of Dorian Gray dazzled the West End and Broadway. The innovative Australian director employs his breathless technical wizardry to fashion a dizzying in-the-round staging.
Du Yun’s score is performed by a tireless ensemble of 10, expertly conducted by Baldur Brönnimann. It’s a genre-bending mix of contemporary classical and nightclub electronica – think Monteverdi meets Stockhausen and takes him round for tea with Björk. Her instrumental palette operates at extremes, with key roles assigned to tuba and lute, yet there’s textural beauty here when the music isn’t joyously kicking ass. Royce Vavrek’s unsettling text gets its message across with a gritty specificity, though the storyline might benefit from more of a preamble.
Williams sets the action on a slow revolve. At first, the angels are alone, huddled centre stage, but soon they are being imprisoned by the shifting walls of Mr and Mrs X E’s suburban home. Marg Horwell captures the drabness of it all with costumes that grow increasingly garish as the couple embrace the celebrity afforded them by their exotic captives. The frenetic action, ingeniously lit by Jack Knowles, is filmed and live-projected on to three enormous screens. Mrs X E’s command that her husband “prune” their feathered visitors triggers an unremitting spiral into physical and sexual abuse.
Frustratingly, while the storytelling is admirably clear, the endlessly rotating walls are problematic, forming an impenetrable barrier that even obscures the screens at times. With the audience standing five deep, those at the back can often only glimpse what happens on stage. The result is disorienting and emotionally distancing.
Allison Cook is relentless as Mrs X E, her supple mezzo embracing the melismatic vocal lines even as she metamorphoses into a Trumpian reality star. Rodney Earl Clarke offers vital support as her browbeaten husband, with Matthew McKinney and Mariam Wallentin heartbreaking as the angels. Kantos Chamber Choir, who open with Gregorian chant and close with American hymnody, do sterling work, flipflopping between a company of angels and the couple’s jaded associates.
The production transfers to London later in the year, rejigged for the Coliseum’s proscenium stage. With sightline issues resolved, it should be one to catch.
