The Wasp Factory, Linbury Studio Theatre/Royal Opera House, review

Middlemarch being more my sort of thing, I came to this pseudo-operatic adaptation of Iain Banks’s horror novel The Wasp Factory with only the sketchiest knowledge of its subject-matter.

Something nasty in the woodshed, a psychotic teenager sadistically killing things in the wilds of Scotland, a high body count and some Gothicky twists and shocks just about sums it up. This version has left me little the wiser.

I gather that David Pountney’s libretto is more a fantasia on the book’s themes than a straight re-enactment of its plot, but I couldn’t be sure of this. All I saw was three raggedy young women emerging from loose earth covering a rectangular raised platform which is slowly raised during the course of the piece’s 70-minute duration until it stands vertical.

The women writhe and clamber about and cling to handles in simian fashion as they sing in a monotonous incantatory style, highly amplified but still not clearly audible, to the accompaniment of a string quintet and bursts and splatters of weirdo electronic noise. (Warning: the opening blast threatened the integrity of my eardrums and lasts a good 20 seconds.) At one point I thought a fire alarm had gone off: perhaps it had, but nobody moved.

This is the creation of Ben Frost, a post-punk, minimalist-maximalist Australian composer resident in Iceland, where he mixes with Björk, Sigur Rós, Nico Muhly and the super-cool, way-out-there groupuscule Bedroom Community.

Despite this impressive pedigree, I can’t say that I found what he had done here either interesting or engaging: there’s too much half-stoned droning, the score lacks light and shade, zest, colour – and by gum, does it take itself seriously.

Frost directs expertly and the performances by the claggy, woolly trio of Liselot de Wilde, Jordis Richter and Mariam Wallentin are totally committed, even if their heavily accented English presents a further impediment to understanding.

I wasn’t bored so much as baffled. But it is healthy to venture out of one’s comfort zone occasionally, and I was surrounded by a capacity audience, all more au fait than I am with the genius of Banks and Frost, who seemed enraptured.

Until 8 October. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; (www.roh.org.uk)