REVIEW: Opera Undone: Tosca & La Boheme at Trafalgar Studios 2

Opera Undone: Tosca & La Boheme is The King’s Head Theatre’s first West End transfer and quite something it is. Puccini’s operas are sung in English and condensed into two 60-minute performances, reimagining the original stories to modernised operas.

Tosca, in this version set in 1940’s New York, is a tale of love, jealousy and torture. Tosca (played by Fiona Finsbury) gets caught up in a romance with Cavaradossi (Roger Paterson), a painter, who has some big secrets. He seeks to help his criminal friend runaway, until creepy Mafia boss Scarpia (Hugo Herman Wilson) captures him and preys on Tosca as revenge. The opera starts strong, with many amusing moments that draw the audience into the show. As the plot becomes more of a tragedy and quite horrifying at times, the audience connection seemed to fade; noticeable in such an intimate staging. The vocals are challenging but were very well executed by all of the cast, however, it seemed that the pace of arguments is stilted when sung and the tension dissipates. It was enjoyable but certainly lacked something, it noticeably seemed that a lot of plot and character depth had to be cut to fit the story into the hour.

REVIEW: Two for the Seesaw at the Trafalgar Studios 2

William Gibson's 1958 play is a bittersweet romantic two hander which was staged on Broadway with Henry Fonda and Ann Bancroft and was made into a film in 1962 starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine . It is staged in the intimate Trafalgar Studio 2 by the Buckland Theatre company and the male character Jerry is played by its founder, Charles Dorfman. Jerry is a lawyer from Nebraska in the process of divorce and struggling in New York to rebuild his career and his relationships away from his wife and father in laws influence . When he meets the fragile dancer Gittel from the Bronx, delightful played by Elsie Bennett, at a party they begin a quirky on off relationship which is constantly under the shadow of his past in Nebraska.

Designer Max Dorey has created a good looking 1950's detailed set with Jerry's pale blue small flat stage right and Gittel's pink bedsit stage left. Each has a table at the edge of the stage with a phone. By adding a corridor along the back of the stage , the design pushes the acting spaces very close to the audience on three sides which sometime means we are looking at the actors backs . In addition as too much of the dialogue is between the characters on stage via the phones in their own apartments or with unseen characters off stage the audience is left glancing left and right at each character while they are on the phone .This becomes a distraction from the otherwise good performances . As the story unfolds the prop changes between each scene seem to get more complicated and in the half light we enjoy the carefully choreographed reset by the two stage crew!