The Alonetimes review – frenetic, funny and exhilarating music theatre
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As we found our seats, a druidic figure wearing a string of vapes as a necklace sat on stage swathed in white fabric and smoke, emitting close-miked mouth noises amid a rising chorus of percussive hisses and rattles. Then dancing flashlights, reverb and thunderous drum rolls. Later came monologues delivered with quiet, skin-crawling sincerity or pounded out as a kind of manic rap and comically dysfunctional text chats projected on the backcloth. Not to mention the dance breaks. There was an angular, hyper-controlled trio fluent in the language of modern ballet and a hands-on-hips traditional number as faux-folk lyrics scrolled in gothic script and a hefty synthetic beat throbbed below. The first collaboration between Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables – two of the most distinctive creators in music theatre today – The Alonetimes was never likely to adhere to the conventional playbook of opera. The programme for its UK premiere describes the work as “a fragmented archaeology of personal stories”.
This article is an excerpt. To read the full content, visit the original source. The Guardian Culture
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