{"id":1090,"date":"2015-04-29T23:03:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T22:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2015-04-29T23:03:04","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T22:03:04","slug":"tralalalala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2015\/04\/tralalalala.html","title":{"rendered":"Tralalalala"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Carmen<\/a><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the most haunting moment of Carmen?<\/em> The rousing toreador\u2019s song? One of the stompy dances? Carmen\u2019s own teasingly lush habanera? Maybe. Or maybe it\u2019s the wordless, taunting snatch of melody with which Carmen taunts Don Jos\u00e9 \u2013 the soldier already in thrall to her, dick and epaulettes caught in a hopeless struggle. \u2018Tralalalala<\/a>,\u2019 she hums, as if to herself. \u2018Tralalalala.\u2019<\/p>\n

It the perfect, wordless expression for a heroine who refuses to be known, to be expected, to be tied down. Words, even your own, can be incriminating. She wants out. Always \u2013 and even if her body is locked up, her heart and mind are already out the window.<\/p>\n

A protagonist whose trajectory is out of here will always be a disruption. In a story in which the irresistible object of desire \u2013 a woman, a man, the tang of freedom \u2013 is the thing that dooms you. Carmen Disruption<\/em><\/a>, a scalding play by Simon Stephens \u2013 first performed in Hamburg last year, now directed at London\u2019s Almeida Theatre in a breathstoppingly beautiful production by Michael Longhurst<\/a> \u2013 isn\u2019t Carmen, Disrupted<\/em>. It\u2019s Disruption<\/em> \u2013 because that\u2019s what the character, the opera, the play all are.<\/p>\n

Object of desire<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea came to Stephens after meeting mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham<\/a>. Carmen is her calling card, and has taken her to opera houses around the world. Another suitcase, same old gypsy. Unpack the luggage, tralala. Stephens imagines a singer with a similar career, fetched up blearily to in a city she may recognise to sing a role she does in her sleep. We\u2019re in a city, nameless, European. A place where people come on business, leave at the first opportunity. A transient throng of tourists, students, one-percenters and the people who service them.<\/p>\n

Ca<\/em>rmen<\/em> is what she knows, what she can cling to, so the singer (Sharon Small) recognises four people she encounters as archetypes from the opera. Jos\u00e9 (Noma Dumezweni<\/a>, pictured top by Marc Brenner) is a female cabdriver, all her attention fixed on a meeting with her son years after she walked away from her first marriage. Micaela (Katie West) is a truculent, lost student, dumped by her ageing professor. Escamillo, the strutting toreador is an equally puffed-up financier (John Light). And Carmen? If not technically on the game, Bizet\u2019s heroine is willing to monetise flirtation. The opera\u2019s object of desire has here become a pro: Jack Farthing\u2019s rentboy, cutting a swathe in a leather jacket and Pierre Cardin silk scarf.<\/p>\n

Lost in their own lives<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nineteenth-century opera is good on desire. It\u2019s the throb of larynx in extremis: the pulse-raising aria, the head thrown back, the chest expanding. Snatches of Bizet\u2019s opera curl, half-remembered through Simon Slater\u2019s soundscape \u2013 and Viktoria Vizin\u2019s vinious mezzo, a plush velvet sound rare in so intimate a theatre, is beguilingly exotic, almost shocking.<\/p>\n

In Bizet, characters pursue what they want, or think they want, with heedless determination. Their love, their cash, their way out. It\u2019s almost frightening, especially when their desires conflict. Stephens\u2019 characters don\u2019t know what they want. Money \u2013 for what? Love \u2013 for who? Escape \u2013 where? The plot points through which Bizet\u2019s people plunge and scrabble are here skipped over, almost casually. John Light\u2019s Escamillo loses a fortune and has it gifted back \u2013 and elides both situations, one by gagging, the other in an entitled grin. Soldier Jos\u00e9 is caught up in smuggling, agonises uselessly about it and is nicked, poor sap. Cabdriver Jos\u00e9 has to do something deeply criminal but barely explained, and gets away with it. That isn\u2019t the point. The point is something she can never have again \u2013 an uncomplicated maternal bond. The kraken gravity of Noma Dumezweni\u2019s voice is something I could listen to forever \u2013 a deeply considered, cat-tongued rasp, devastating when it describes Jos\u00e9\u2019s ache of being apart from, inching towards, her son.<\/p>\n

This Carmen \u2013 look away, look away \u2013 does something more than start a catfight on the cigarette factory assembly line. But even that doesn\u2019t haunt him, though it rattles him. Farthing\u2019s voice inflects comic, inflects unaffected. What everyone comes to intuit is how they\u2019ve been hollowed out by the sump of modern life. Crisscrossing, circling around the opera house, they haunt their own lives like ghosts. Sure, they cling to their phones, and an orange-lettered text screen almost mockingly scrolls through email notifications, song lyrics, train and airport information. The textual detritus of the city, leaving eyeballs behind.<\/p>\n

If these people \u2013 if we \u2013 were happier, more leisured, they\u2019d be fl\u00e2neurs. They\u2019d have a chance to watch as they wandered, like the gentlemanly first consumers of Bizet\u2019s Carmen<\/em> at the Op\u00e9ra-Comique in 1874, thrilling to the Hispanic exoticism, piqued by the transgressive sex and spoken dialogue, startled to discover that this story was nothing and everything to do with them. Fl\u00e2neurie is a boulevard-hopping habit for happier times. These people are lost in their own lives.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Marc Brenner<\/p><\/div>\n

It isn\u2019t a pretty show, or a neat one \u2013 but lord above, it\u2019s beautiful. The iconic curved back brick wall of the Almeida \u2013 decaying for our\u00a0 delight since 1837<\/a> \u2013 has been concealed in recent shows, but here sashays forth in all its textured glory, enhanced by added rubble. The air is smoky \u2013 hazed and sulphurous, sometimes a beguiling gold. You can imagine a forbiddingly clean, glassy set, with the characters failing to gain traction on its shiny surfaces. Lizzie Clachan’s<\/a> design reminds us that a city is an agglomeration of phantoms, present layered on past. There\u2019s no corrida, but there\u2019s a heavy bull, felled on the floor \u2013 we skirt around it to take our seats, and the light heightens its ink-suede solidity. Opera, that mausoleum artform, seems at home in this setting. It\u2019s ravishing.<\/p>\n

Lost characters. A sensual environment of music and tilted choreography (by Imogen Knight). A text<\/a> of frowning lyricism. It\u2019s a disorienting mixture, and when I left after 100 minutes, the city felt changed. Walking back through Islington, everything around seemed staged \u2013 the development drinks party in the foyer, all polite smiles and white wine; the middle youth working their chops in the cocktails and gelato joints down Upper Street; the have-nots and have-lots jostling beside each other; a tumble of blossom as the spring turned cold. Tralalalala in my head. I walked home, exposed and unseen.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s the most haunting moment of Carmen? The rousing toreador\u2019s song? One of the stompy dances? Carmen\u2019s own teasingly lush habanera? Maybe. Or maybe it\u2019s the wordless, taunting snatch of melody with which Carmen taunts Don Jos\u00e9 \u2013 the soldier already in thrall to her, dick and epaulettes caught in a hopeless struggle. \u2018Tralalalala,\u2019 she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[194,86,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-almeida-theatre","9":"tag-opera","10":"tag-theatre","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1093,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}