Swanhunter, Linbury Studio Theatre, review: 'pleasant but prosaic'

Fluent, prolific, versatile and unpretentious, Jonathan Dove writes friendly music that adapts to all circumstances and steers clear of nasty modern noises. Like Britten and Hindemith - and most court composers of the 18th century - he prefers to be immediately useful rather than daringly original, and his readiness to fit in and provide what’s needed has given him particular success in the field of community and children’s opera.

Swanhunter belongs to the latter category. It’s an hour-long, one-act work, with a text by Alasdair Middleton based on stories in the Finnish epic Kalevala about the Siegfried-like character of Lemminkäinen, an innocent lumbering oaf of a boy who sets out to find himself a wife.

His capacity to sing his way out of trouble serves him well in the face of encounters with disagreeable monsters, until he takes aim at the beautiful Swan which lives on the river of Death - at which point he meets a fate from which only his loyal mother can rescue him.

It’s a splendid yarn, with plenty of elements to appeal to the imaginations of bright children of the 7-10 age group. I only doubt that the score supplies the necessary horse-power.

The flip side of Dove’s “accessibility” is a playing safe which results in a complete lack of strikingly memorable incident or melody. Here, at least, a stab is made at creating a primitive folkish idiom, avoiding the usual recourse to the clichés of John Adams and Stephen Sondheim. But the tinkling of a harp and the wheezing of an accordion in the seven-piece band aren’t enough to evoke the forest and tundra, the witches and wonders of Lemminkäinen’s quest: where is the frisson of terror and awe, the wild rumpus?

^{Puppet masters: Christopher Diffey, "Lemminkäinen" and Suzanne Shakespeare. Photo: Richard Davenport}

This air of well-intentioned adults giving children something that is good for them is compounded by Hannah Mulder and Rachel Canning’s pretty staging which uses cute puppetry and suggests a story being told by bobble-hatted happy hikers round a camp fire. The net effect is pleasant, but prosaic and - oh dear - faintly patronising, with a drably downbeat and protracted threnodic conclusion.

The band under Justin Doyle plays expertly, and although Adrian Dwyer seems rather mature for the callow Lemminkäinen, he and the remainder of the six-strong cast perform with admirable brio. I only wish that Dove had fed them something meatier.

Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk