The Lion's Face

Synopsis

Compassionate, heartfelt, strikingly dramatic and often witty, The Lion’s Face is a musical tale of love, loss and family. The story begins with a man forgetting his own birthday: a trivial thing, but one which signals an irreversible return to childhood. Told through theatre and music, this is not only a highly original and richly-textured take on ageing, but a look at the incomprehension of getting old in the minds of the young.

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 28 May 2010

Operatic characters frequently lose their reason, notably in the works of the bel canto era. It’s usually a tuneful matter with the audience afforded the further comfort of knowing either that it will all come right in the end or that the delusion acts as a cushion against fatal violence. Elena Langer and her librettist Glyn Maxwell put an altogether darker scenario before us in The Lion’s Face.

We are in a care home, bleak and clinical in its white cleanliness (an effectively simple set by Alex Lowde. Snow is falling outside the window. A man whose age hovers between middle and old stares out. This is Mr D, who suffers from dementia in the shape of Alzheimer’s disease. His is a spoken role, setting him apart from his wife, the doctor, the care-worker and her daughter – the other contemporary people whom we meet – all of whom are singers. Mr D lives in a receded past; it’s one which excludes those whose lives are affected by his con...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

No reviews yet

Click here to add your review