ENO’s Drive & Live La Bohème, Alexandra Palace, review: not something I'd want to experience again
Billed as "the world’s first fully staged drive-in opera", this production of La Bohème is a brave experiment in response to current restrictions. I take my hat off to English National Opera for the effort and imagination invested in the project, but it’s not something that I’d want to experience again.
How did it work? The site is a concrete concourse just below Alexandra Palace, in which a temporary stage has been erected in the manner of a rock spectacular. About a hundred and twenty cars are lined in ten rows: we were asked to stay inside our vehicles and feed the sound into our car radios through an FM frequency. Instead, I rolled down the windows and heard perfectly well from the main speakers. The sound was well amplified. Large screens relay the action on stage; the orchestra (efficiently conducted by ENO’s Music Director Martyn Brabbins) is accommodated on two tiers at the rear.
The ticket commands us to arrive over an hour before the performance began, which meant an awful lot of hanging around, with the added irritation of alcohol being forbidden. Those who come on bicycles hunker down in a cordoned-off area to the side of the stage. In clement weather this wasn’t so bad, but it could be dismal if autumnal wind and rain set in. The price for one standard-sized car is just over ￡100 – good value if there are four of you, except that I can’t think that people sitting in the back would have a good view.
The production, directed by P J Harris and designed by Chloe Lamford, uses a new translation that transfers the setting from mid nineteenth–century Paris to twenty-first century London. The four bohemians and the dressmaker Mimi appear to be down on their luck and living in camper vans. The Café Momus scene takes place in a colourful fairground; Musetta and Alcindoro arrive in a flashy limousine driven through the audience up a ramp connected to the acting area. It’s good fun.
The score has been treated liberally. There’s a car-park attendant who makes comic announcements and a breakdancing routine between the first and second acts to an electronic mix of themes from the opera. In order to ensure a running time of ninety-odd minutes (without interval), extensive cuts have been made – notably to the opening of the third and fourth acts.
Everything seems to happen in a great hurry – one loses the sense of seasonal passage that Puccini and his librettists suggest so carefully, and one might conclude here that Mimi and Rodolfo had only a one-night stand. It is this frenetic pace, rather than the inevitable social distancing which prevents Rodolfo from so much as touching Mimi’s tiny frozen hand, that leaves the performance totally unmoving. Mimi ends up sleeping rough – her cough now coronavirus-related? – gingerly covered with Colline’s army-surplus coat. But there just isn’t enough time to get emotionally involved.
Vocally plush and sensuous performances by the dream team of Natalya Romaniw and David Butt Philip as Mimi and Rodolfo give enormous pleasure. Roderick Williams, costumed alarmingly like Noddy Holder of Slade notoriety, is miscast as Marcello, though he sings well enough. Soraya Mafi is a plucky little liver bird of a Musetta, and William Thomas delivers Colline’s farewell quite beautifully.
Instead of applause, the audience parp their car horns, making a hideous noise that palpably alarms the singers and ruins those exquisitely calculated pauses in Mimi and Rodolfo’s first-act encounter. The show has novelty value, but this is no Bohème for purists.
Until 27 September. Tickets (booking online only): www.eno.org