Jakob Lenz review, Hampstead

Lenz fluids

Later this year Hampstead Theatre will be transformed into an athletics track for Chariots of Fire. At the moment it's hosting an opera in a sodden, stinking swamp full of deep pools and squelching marshes where a righteous community of churchgoers is watching the poet Jakob Lenz, played here by a centaur of a baritone, Andrew Shore, slip slowly into madness.

First there are a number of real life slips including one of the company  flat on her back within seconds of the start, and Shore will surely become the middle-aged man's poster boy for his astonishing ability to weather half the performance either on his knees, or up to his knees in water. One imagined costumes being shovelled into washing machines behind the scenes while physios liberally applied Collis Browne's embrocation to soprano rears. If it were possible to get trench foot by association, half the audience would have hobbled home.

The stalls at the theatre have been reconfigured to accommodate an orchestra and Sam Brown's direction is admirable. So too is the theatre's appetite for experiment with this ENO co-production of what is essentially a tuneless 75 minutes. On the website, Wolfgang Reim's music is described as 'Expressionist sonic' and it is true that madness does not lend itself to sweeping overtures or arias; but Lenz was a poet, wasn't there space for just one sweet piece of sound to lift the moment?

In conclusion: Jakob Lenz is a fabulous production and opera buffs may easily put reason to Reim, but for those more attuned to Puccini, or cautious about opera, the drama is insufficient diversion from the music.

References
Hampstead Theatre, bookings.
Hugo Shirley review in The Daily Telegraph

Hampstead Theatre is on Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 3EU. This production is now over.