Review: VIXEN, The Vaults

In the dark, underground, illuminated by the soft green LED lights of our headphones glowing in the gloom, we could almost be in some bucolic sylvan glade, our eyes assisted by dappled fading sunlight, sitting amongst the frogs, dogs and foxes of which composer Leos Janacek wrote.

We're not. We're under the railway arches of Waterloo station with trains rumbling overhead, a reminder - if we really needed one - of the urban structures (physical, social and psychological) all around us. And, in this re-imagining of the Czech's opera, The Cunning Little Vixen, Silent Opera brings the story right into the heart of the city of 2017, our vixen a homeless girl needing all her cunning to survive.

Rosie Lomas is flame-eyed, frightening and frightened, her hair red, red, red ringlets, a Wilding vixen who is brought home by Ivan Ludlow's creepy Forester, whose dysfunctional house provides a dubious refuge for homeless kids like her. Narrowly avoiding rape, she hooks up with a lad who loves her, finds some happiness on the edge of society and soon a baby is on the way. But murder and mayhem lurks round every corner and nobody lives happily ever after, the opera concluding on Forester finding another little vixen to rescue/corrupt.

Summarised thus, it all sounds a little depressing, but Lomas invests her Vixen with such energy and fight that the human spirit keeps bursting through, especially in her soaring soprano, her voice lifting her from the pits of despair. The music, played through the headphones and supplemented by actor/musicians playing live, is eerily East European, often reminiscent of the soundtracks of silent movies, danger suffusing every note - proper opera swirling all around us.

All-through in a searing 90 minutes or so with a bit of moving about from one scene to another, the tech all works (and so well that you forget about it) and the pace is relentless. You choose where to sit, where to look and what to think - you're a creator too, literally alongside the cast.

Director Daisy Evans and designer Kitty Callister have created an unforgettable experience and, even if it can be a little tricky to follow at times, it's a wonderfully engaging and contemporary show that will entice younger people to opera for the first time (but not the last time).

Vixen continues at The Vaults until 10 June.

Photo Robert Workman

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