How the Whale Became, Linbury Studio - opera review

This show has sporadic charm but it's a bit much for kids, and a touch childish for adults
Kieron Quirke2 January 2014

A bit much for kids, and a touch childish for adults, I can't see this curate's egg of a show — based on Ted Hughes — finding a rapt audience this Christmas. But if you can shrug off passages of boredom, it has sporadic charm and moments of sonic and visual wonder.

The set is a beautiful, unlikely workshop, a Chockablock Eden where toils God, who makes animals and helps them learn their own ways. Several stories on this theme are acted out by an enthusiastic (and lovely-sounding) cast of four. The Whale gets a spout to deinflate itself regularly. A messed-up creation gets a pretty tail et voilà — peacock.

Julian Philips’s music is a versatile mix of accordion, percussion and wind. The instrumentation is often dazzling. Whale music is majestically rendered, while something really Froggy is done with metallophones and tin whistle. A shame the vocal lines are so workmanlike, and that something as distinct as a song is a rare thing. Meanwhile, Edward Kemp’s faux-naif libretto makes you smile when it keeps things light — but justifies darker stories with stolid moralising. It all makes for a show that is technically brilliant but never emotionally engages for long.

It is, however, great when it does, and moments when design, music and performance collide beautifully dapple this flawed piece. If you want to feel the thrill of Polar Bear (Fflur Wyn) discovering the Pole, or a man inventing the moon, maybe go. It was worth it for me. But I didn’t have a six-year-old in tow.

Until January 4 (020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk)

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