Review: TURANDOT, Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre

With a 2016 Olivier Award nomination for a boutique La bohème on her CV, Becca Marriott (co-directing with Iskandar إسكندر  R. Sharazuddin) is the ideal theatremaker to compress Puccini’s epic Turandot into the space of the Arcola and the ethos of Grimeborn. Cue the innovative staging, the pacy (well, pacier) storytelling and the singing delivered at thrillingly close quarters. Not every decision pays off, but opera is always a highwire act and more stays in the air than falls to the floor in this production.

Approaching half a century on from Edward Said’s hugely influential book, Orientalism, opera is still grappling with the legacy of imperialism, the European perspective unapologetically underpinning some of its most celebrated works. Correctly, it is no longer enough simply to congratulate oneself for avoiding Yellowface or flying the stage with shuffling Geishas, so this Princess Turandot is introduced as an online avatar living in a hyperreal 21st century industrial powerhouse, a land of glass and concrete skyscrapers, freeways and high-speed trains. She’s as distant from her people as the Turandot of 100 years ago and at the centre of a regime as ruthless as was the one depicted in 1926. Erin Guan’s video design creates this dreamy, dystopian world from which we never escape.

The cast are drawn from the South Asian diaspora, at their best when singing in harmony, backed by an excellent chorus, the unforgiving acoustics determined by brick and steel, overwhelmed by the volume (in every sense) of the voices. 

Reiko Fukuda gives us a brutal Turandot, the killer of suitors, but she shows her vulnerability when her lifelong revenge on men for the mistreatment of an ancestor must be abandoned after Calaf’s solving of her riddles. James Liu’s mysterious Prince Calaf doesn’t quite match her presence and some will be disappointed that “Nessun Dorma” is sung as an aria within the opera rather than a standalone showcase for a tenor - others will be pleased that the cliché was swerved.

The standout performance comes from poor doomed Liu, the slave who is infatuated with Calaf and is tortured to reveal his name before embracing her death as the price for his happiness with Turandot. Hemin Li’s singing is beautiful in its tragic helplessness, showing the steel in her spine and the emptiness in her soul once she knows that Calaf will never forego his princess.  

Not everything works. An all-through run time of 90 minutes demands some cuts and it’s tricky initially to work out who is who. Opera, always intense and seldom more intense than when Puccini is in charge, is so powerful in this space that a pause for breath (full intervals are tricky at this theatre) would have been welcome, a chance to let the emotions settle a little.

Nevertheless, this Turandot is an innovative, challenging and moving presentation of a great opera, a production that returned it to the people at the heart of its story. Madama Butterfly next?  

Turandot is at the Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre until 26 August

Photo Credit: Arcola Theatre

To post a comment, you must register and login.