The Firework-Maker's Daughter – review

David Bruce is a composer who enjoys playing with fire. Last year he produced a promethean oratorio for large choir and accompanying pyrotechnic installation in the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral. Now he has created an operatic version of Philip Pullman's novel, which climaxes in an explosive competition to determine who is the finest firework-maker in the land.

Quite which land is open to question – Pullman's fairytale is set in a non‑specific, far-eastern region where fire-fiends live in the mountains, pirates patrol the lakes and white elephants are sprayed with advertising slogans in the market place. But the jumble of influences works to great advantage in John Fulljames's production, jointly created by the Opera Group and Opera North, which combines Indonesian shadow-puppetry with the inventory of a stationery cupboard.

Glyn Maxwell's playful libretto adapts the adventures of Lila, a young girl determined to follow the family profession of firestarting, who sets out on a quest to procure Royal Sulphur, the mythical ingredient for making a really big bang. She doesn't find it, though she does discover who her friends are along the way: Hamlet, a lovesick white elephant, and Chulak, whose job is to scrub off the cruel graffiti that lovesick white elephants attract.

Bruce's vividly coloured chamber score skims the Pacific rim for influences, combining gamelan crashes and plunky pentatonics with the incongruous wheeze of an accordion to create a beguiling, imaginary hybrid of Indo-European folk music. The cast are all engaging comic performers as well as fine singers: Mary Bevan's Lila has a gung-ho tendency to leap before she looks; Andrew Slater is delightful as the hapless Rambashi, whose career plans as a pirate and caterer come to nought; James Laing's ethereal countertenor seems curiously suited to the plight of a pining white elephant.

Indoor fireworks run the risk of becoming a bit of a damp squib. But there are genuine oohs and aahs elicited from the comically simple solution devised by designer Dick Bird and the puppet specialists Indefinite Articles, who knock up an ingenious array of special effects using little more than marker pens and overhead projectors. The Firework-Maker's Daughter frequently attempts the impossible, but offers surprisingly low-tech proof that the apparatus of the seminar room can provide a world of enchantment.

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