Review - Skin Deep - Opera North
Date Reviewed: 27th February, 2009
Venue: The Lowry
This new, surreal dark comedy operetta, co-produced between Opera North, Bregenzer Festspeile, and the Royal Danish Opera, is certainly modern opera. Parts of the show are very funny, other parts almost hit the spot or might well have done. Let me explain; the problem is that this is real opera, and that means that some of the lyrics are unintelligible.
The beginning is slow, but the plot and pace pick up to pull the audience into a surreal saga based around cosmetic surgery and one man’s fixation on creating the elixir of life. Geoffrey Dolton’s Doctor Needlemeier is well sung, but comes over rather like Jerry Springer without the charisma.
Gwendoline Christie, in the one non-singing role of reporter Susannah Dangerfield, shines out among the other characters. Her comic timing, especially when she is attempting to be inconspicuous, instantly engages the audience. She also provides a great mini narrative for the show.
The three female leads Janis Kelly as Lania, Heather Shipp as Donna and Amy Freston as Elsa all have excellent voices but were the most difficult to understand; a shame, as they carried large amounts of the storyline. For last night’s performance Adrian Dwyer stood in as Robert, who becomes narcissistic after undergoing surgery to please his lover. Dwyer is charismatic but the character was under-used for a lot of the show: having been introduced and then served his purpose, he was sidelined to walking across the stage at various intervals and looking in a mirror until late in Act Three.
Mark Stone gives a good performance as the image-conscious actor, Luke Pollock, who against his will makes an intimate contribution to the doctor’s elixir. He gives a great comic feel to the character; but unfortunately it is still a very one dimensional role which he can do nothing to improve.
Opera North’s chorus and five dancers provide all the other characters, from doctors to guests at the clinic. The chorus are uniformly consistent in their ability to provide the necessary backing to the principle characters.
Overall the combination of a great score by David Sawer and the quirky text by Armando Ianucci, should make for a great evening’s entertainment. On some levels it succeeds. But a tendency to be a little predictable, and the frequent lack of diction needed to convey the necessities of the storyline, mean that Skin Deep never really makes it to greatness.
-Helen Jones