Review: CLOCKS 1888: THE GREENER, Hackney Empire, April 20 2016

London's East End works to the rhythm of the Coster's timepiece, a great mechanical melange of cogs and clockworks. That machinery is kept running by the Greener, a girl more interested in stars and science than strikes and sex. But the recent workers' industrial disputes (and, perhaps the sex, just a little) is what interests the aristocratic Author, who sees genius in the mixed race girl and is prepared to challenge the taboos of Victorian society to be with her - but will she play along?

Clocks 1888: the greener (continuing at the Hackney Empire until 22 April) is Brolly Production's bold, often beautiful, brave new opera, an attempt to bring together disparate aesthetics and forms to make a theatrical event. Does it work? Mostly, but not completely - which is as much a comment on its ambition as its execution.

The strongest aspects of the show are its design elements. Described by Brolly as "steampunk", I felt its aesthetic owed much to Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away with Patricia Rozario's Ma's relationship with Keisha Atwell's Greener paralleling that of Kamaji and Chihiro's in the bathhouse. Dickon Gough sings well as the egregious Coster, his bass vocals working well with Adam Temple-Smith's tenor as the Friedrich Engels inspired Author. The animations and projections impress, as do the very solid wheels and cogs on stage.

It is in the drama that the show fails to live up to its visuals. The characters are often rather stiff and still and this lack of movement carries forward into the narrative too. We never quite find out what motivated The Author nor the reasons for his rejection by Greener. There's little backstory provided for Coster, who is reduced to a standard Dickensian villain as a result. And, though the work is conceived as part of a trilogy, the conclusion is so open-ended that one feels a little cheated having invested time in discovering the fates of Greener and The Author in particular, to be left hanging at the curtain.

It's lovely to look at and the music (by Martin Ward) dips and soars as opera should, but the work feels somewhat unfinished, rather rushed towards the end. Perhaps the clocks needed to run a little more slowly in that last half-hour.

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