Così

“You’re doing an opera!  With just a piano and mad people.” 

At the King’s Head, Islington, a bunch of lunatics is putting on an opera in a run-down theatre and it’s only the obsessive persistence of the most dysfunctional of them all that keeps things going.  Let’s unravel this a little.

Adam Spreadbury-Maher’s latest production at London’s Little Opera House is Louis Nowra’s play Così, in which the inmates of an Australian asylum decide to stage Mozart’s Così fan tutte (overture by Wagner) as a form of therapy.  Any resemblance to living persons or situations is purely coincidental. 

The play is set in 1970 against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.  The biggest problem faced by ingenuous director Lewis (Matthew Burton), fresh from theatrical dabblings at university, is that none of his performers can sing.  In the case of the bow-tied, shorts-wearing ex-lawyer Henry (David Price), slated to play the key role of Don Alfonso, even coherent speech is an effort, so the portents aren’t great.

Nowra’s play is certainly entertaining and is well put together but relies worryingly on laughs drawn from the mental illness of its characters, with a generic idea of “madness” constantly allied to criminality.   Apart from that, there’s a certain amount of weaving of themes from the opera into the story, with a bit of Art vs Politics thrown in. 

Burton is excellent as the cash-strapped (why else would he bother under the circumstances?) Lewis.  He’s a great listener, a rare and under-valued quality in an actor.

Cameron Harris’s staring, pill-popping accordionist Zac is good value and Nathan Lang has a frenetic energy as the pussy cat burning Doug.  Sophie Brabenec raises some well-timed laughs with her understated timidity and Hamish MacDougall’s double act of nerdy social worker and right-on back-stabber is nicely judged.

Spreadbury-Maher evokes the period convincingly but overall there's a lack of subtlety in the performances, with a tendency to generalised loony acting, and the farcical elements of the piece are the least successful. 

If you’re not looking for anything too deep and searching, and you don’t live with someone who’s schizophrenic or bi-polar, it’s an entertaining evening.

- Simon Thomas