Carmen Disruption

The inside of playwright Simon Stephens brain must be one hell of a place. I blow hot and cold with his work, but it’s always interesting and  challenging. This one’s more luke warm, largely because I don’t really get it.

Carmen is a rent boy, Don Jose a female taxi driver, Escamillo a hot-shot trader and Micaela a girl from the sticks. Then there’s the character of an opera singer, and an actual opera singer as ‘chorus’. Two of the characters aren’t particularly well drawn (Micaela & the taxi driver) and their stories not well developed. It’s mostly a series of monologues (if you know me, you can see where I’m going here…..) with seemingly little interconnectedness.

You enter the stalls through the dressing room / wings and over the stage, where a dead bull dominates. We seem to be in a disused theatre, complete with chandelier and red balcony fascia with lamps. Lizzie Clachan’s design and Jack Knowles lighting create striking, compelling images. Simon Slater’s original music, played on two cellos, adds to and references actual Bizet and is very atmospheric. The performances are all terrific. It’s all very ‘European’.

But what exactly is the point of taking characters from an opera and giving them different lives and stories and then telling them individually on the same stage without really linking them together into a cohesive narrative? Answers on a postcard, please.