BWW Reviews: LA BOHEME, King's Head Theatre, December 18 2014
The lads are broke, shivering in their cold flat. Rodolfo is a failing writer, Marcello a failing artist, Schaunard a not quite failing musician and Colline (gay, but as laddish as the others) "working" on a Ph.D - in other words a failing academic. When any of them manage to turn up some money, it's takeaways, tequilas and a trip to the pub. It's hardly luxury, but you get the idea that they wouldn't want it any other way.
Until, in search of fifty pence for the meter, blonde bombshell Mimi turns up from Ukraine, via the outside landing, Rodolfo is smitten and so is she. But the kid has no papers, having overstayed her visa and is already coughing more than she should when, as it does, the path of true love runs less than smoothly and carefree days become a distant memory.
Robin Norton-Hale's adaptation of La Boheme might just have changed opera forever (at least in London). Having opened at the tiny c*ckTavern five years ago, it transferred to the Soho Theatre, won an Olivier, secured a residency for OperaUpClose at the King's Head Theatre and spawned twenty more productions (and counting) with boutique operas popping up like stand-up shows in the late 80s. These operas, sung thrillingly close up in English with recognisable settings but the with same soaring tunes, have introduced thousands to the joys of the genre. I should know - I'm one.
It's not difficult to see why. Anthony Flaum plays Rodolfo as a lovestruck everyman - who just happens to sing so spectacularly - with plenty of laughs along the way. Louisa Tee is coy and never less than fragile as Mimi, but you can see the strength she needed to forge a new life in the UK and her persistent love of Rodolfo, for all his jealous rages. They get excellent support, especially from Nick Dwyer's alpha male Marcello and his on-off lover Musetta, Sarah Minns all but pole-dancing her way back into his heart in the pub during the "interval". The opera at that point is so up close that we're in it!
As with the three productions revisited to mark the end of the company's residency at the venue, for all the innovation, all the informality, all the liberties taken with the libretto, at the heart of the matter is the music and the characters, which remain loyal to Puccini's original - and, though he is notorious for killing his women off, boy, does he give them some tunes first!
La Boheme is, if it's not too much of a stretch, a feelgood tragedy. Its energy and its sheer love of life buoys you up so high that even its ending cannot wholly take away its life-affirming joy. This is opera not for the few who can deal with all the form's undoubted subtleties, but for those coming for a bloody good time - and that's exactly what you'll get.
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