The Sunken Garden, Barbican Theatre: Opera review
WHEN the rather lukewarm applause had died down at the end of the premier of the new multimedia opera The Sunken Garden at the Barbican, I turned to the complete stranger sitting on my right and asked, "Well, what did you make of that?" She looked thoughtful, then said, "It was very… (she paused while seeking the right word) “…interesting."
"I think I ought to read the book to find out what it was all about," I said.
"I read the synopsis before it started," she said, "and that didn't help."
And that, I think, sums up the problems with The Sunken Garden. To be fair, it is a bit of an experiment. Combining opera, 3D film and standard 2D film in a single production is an ambitious, perhaps even bizarre concept, and going to an opera in which you have to put on 3D glasses halfway through is a curious experience, but to some extent at least, the triumph of this production shows that it might work. The only problem is that on this occasion, it didn't.
The Sunken Garden is a collaboration between the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa and British novelist David Mitchell.
With such novels as Could Atlas and Ghostwritten, Mitchell has established himself as a leading writer of imaginative fiction and for the Sunken Garden came up with a plot involving a good deal of mystery and a large dollop of fantasy, with the fantasy world portrayed in 3D.
With van der Aa's style of atmospheric composition, but it seemed to suffer from the fact that the composer was also directing, which seemed to upset the balance between the music and the action.
In fact, once we put our 3D glasses on, I found it very difficult to keep up with what was going on. Someone had disappeared and apparently found refuge in a fantasy world run by a mysterious witch-like psychiatrist, while the people trying to track down the missing person discovered other missing people on their way who also ended up in the 3D garden.
What happened next and why it happened, however, got lost somewhere in the unintelligible libretto, and whatever was going on seemed to get even more lost as the pace dropped and my own interest in the proceedings became just as lost as the characters.
The cast, on both film and stage, perform excellently, especially the singers Roderick Williams, Katherine Manley and Claron McFadden who get their voices round van der Aa's highly demanding score in an impressive way.
That apart, the one good thing to come out of all this is the technical accomplishment of the production, which shows that it may indeed be possible to combine live action of people on stage with a projected 3D world that seems to be encircling them.
As an interesting experiment, the Sunken Garden could be considered a success. As an evening's entertainment, however, it leaves much to be desired. I can only hope that the English National Opera singers find their way back safely to the Coliseum after their foray into the 3D fantasy world of the Barbican Theatre.
Rating: Two stars
Tickets: www.eno.org or 020 7845 9300
