The programme calls it 'a fragmented archaeology of personal stories,' which is accurate and also completely fails to prepare you for a druidic figure wearing a string of vapes as a necklace, emitting close-miked mouth noises while smoke curls around them and a rising chorus of percussive hisses fills the room. What Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables have built is less an opera than a personality — one that is extremely online, occasionally sweaty, and capable of genuine tenderness. There is no single linear plot. Six performers step in and out of unnamed roles, switch between instruments and singing, form a taut Greek chorus, and stand alone in spotlights delivering monologues with skin-crawling sincerity or pounding them out as manic rap. Text chats appear on the backcloth. Dance breaks happen. 'Soft looksmaxxing' and 'super-fucking awkward!' coexist with brief, disjointed suspensions on the accordion that stop you cold. The music is built on obsessive short loops — frantic violin lines that feel borrowed from Bartók's folksier scores, hammered rhythm as sonic strobe lighting — but it keeps opening into something else: quiet drones, gentle humming, a six-part chorale that lands like a held breath. The angular, hyper-controlled trio that materializes for the dance breaks speaks fluent contemporary ballet and immediately pivots to a hands-on-hips traditional number while faux-folk lyrics scroll in gothic script over a synthetic beat. The gear-shifts are so confident they feel inevitable. The comedy is the work's most underrated achievement. Not the jokes — those land, but the laughs are cheap if the people aren't real. Oskar McCarthy's aerobics instructor ('hi everyone,' murmured with slippers-and-Ovaltine energy) provoked genuine gales because McCarthy had built a complete human being before delivering the punchline. Andreas Borregaard, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Loré Lixenberg, Vanessa Porter, and Adam Starkie operate at the same level throughout, navigating hyperactive tragicomedy with the kind of care that makes baffling material feel necessary rather than arbitrary. The UK premiere at the Schwarzman Centre is proof that the most interesting things in contemporary music theatre are happening outside the conventional opera house and its conventions — and that the form can be both formally rigorous and laugh-out-loud funny in the same breath. Sometimes bonkers, never dull, and occasionally genuinely beautiful.
