Review: LA BOHÈME, King's Head Theatre, 5 September 2016

We still get the messy flat (beautifully designed by Becky-Dee Trevenen) and the struggling artists, this time in present day Dalston rather than 19th-century Paris, but this new version (by Adam Spreadbury-Maher and Becca Marriot) pares the story down to the four main characters: Mark, Ralph, Mimi and Musetta (well, not quite just those four - but that would be telling).

Mark and Ralph are on their computers, struggling to keep warm and pay the rent when Mimi, their neighbour, comes in to borrow a cigarette lighter. Ralph is immediately smitten (but clocks the lines on Mimi's arm straightaway) and Mimi is keen on him too - they're going to be lovers. Meanwhile Mark has gone to the pub to resume his on-off affair with the outrageous Musetta, who likes to flirt and won't be tied down.

Things start to go wrong for Ralph and Mimi when his need to control and her need for drugs sends them spiraling towards disaster. Things have never really gone right for Mark and Musetta, but we can see that they're decent underneath it all and probably should be together. The price we pay for Puccini's genius is that we know that a happy ending is unlikely if he's in charge.

This is the second boutique La Bohème at this venue in the past five years or so, but the story and, especially, the music, are plenty strong enough to sustain another trip to Upper Street, and many in the audience will enjoy seeing the parallels between Opera Up Close's award-winning production and this one - both, of course, can stand firmly on their own feet.

This 2016 version is very 2016, with references to social media, UKIP and a strong identification with "Generation Rent" stuck with call-centre jobs or insecure employment, trapped in bedsit land. Not for the first time at this venue, this is an ideal introduction to opera for those who might think it a little aloof from the real world - this is grubby and real.

The cast will alternate through performances, but the four I saw were all good. As Ralph, Matthew Kimble seldom lets himself go vocally, but that makes his full-throated moments all the more impassioned, as his love for Mimi fails to overcome the obstacles of his jealousy and her habit. Becca Marriott's Mimi is always vulnerable, but is convincingly coquettish in the first half before her descent to hollow-eyed junkie in the terrible closing minutes.

Most of the laughs (and there are plenty before tragedy sets in) are at the expense of the pompous Mark (Thomas Humphreys, who is not quite as supercharged a singer as the others, but a natural comic actor). Honey Rouhani's Musetta is sensationally over the top, a great turn as the tart with a heart, though the cuts to the story make her transition from licentious gold-digging to concerned altruism rather too swift to be wholly convincing.

The music is provided by Panaretos Kyriatzidis at the piano and Alison Holford at the cello. While nicely balanced with the voices (this version is sung in English), some of Puccini's soaring score feels a slightly anaemic if you've a full orchestra playing in your mind's ear when the more famous arias kick off.

That, though, is an unfair criticism, as this venue, probably above all others, has pioneered the boutique opera as almost a self-contained genre in its own right. What one loses in all-enveloping music is more than compensated for in the proximity of the singers, the passion blazing in their eyes and the crystal clarity of their voices. Boutique operas are not so much scaled back as scaled differently, and this one is no exception. See for yourself if you don't believe me!

La Bohème continues at the King's Head Theatre until 8 October (restricted to 18+ due to drug references).

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