BWW Reviews: PAGLIACCI, The Kings Head Theatre, March 9 2011

And all of a sudden, you're in the middle of it. Brutish Tonio (Dominic Barrand) is shushing a gentleman a row or two in front of you and singing our prologue, but now a husband and wife start bickering a row behind you (again, in song) and who's that in the back row getting involved and, and, well.. you know what Italy is like.

From its opening bars, Anna Gregory's new version of Pagliacci is OperaUpClose opera so close that it's turning your head and tearing your heart. Pregnant Nedda (Katie Bird) is married to ringmaster, Pagliacci (Paul Featherstone), an older man determined to keep Nedda as close to hand as he does his puppets. Not without cause, as the travelling circus' drum-banging odd-job-man-cum-clown Tonio is in love with Nedda, as is our man at the back, Silvio (David Durham), whose love is reciprocated by Nedda and whose claim to parentage of her unborn child is as good as Pagliacci's. After Tonio's advances are rebuffed, he brings Pagliacci back to the circus in time for him to see his wife in the embrace of Silvio (whom he does not know) and his betrayal sets the menage-a-trois on a road to destruction.

The second half begins with a beautiful show of love from two unnamed ballet dancers, before the husband and wife (back again, still a row behind you and still bickering) remind us of a less idealistic side of love. All at once, we're pitched into love's darkest corner, as the formalism of the clowns' Commedia dell'arte's posturing is grotesquely reflected behind them in Pagliacci's Punch and Judy show. Soon the pressure of the puppet show's storyline of infidelity overcomes Pagliacci's minimal self-control and the menage-a-trois is slashed to a menage-a-un.

Ruggerio Leoncavallo, inspired by a true story, wrote his opera in 1890, but the emotions it calls upon are as recognisable today as 121 or 2121 years ago. Katie Bird sings beautifully and is utterly convincing as the object of three men's love, while Paul Featherstone is as mad in his jealous rage as David Durham is mad in his doomed desire as Dominic Barrand is mad in his impotent anger. Set on a bare stage, in a space too small to contain the acting, the singing or the passions and with Danyal Dhondy's orchestration cranking up music that hardly needs it, the tragic denouement comes almost as a relief. There's no tightrope in this circus, but our hearts are in our mouths for 90 minutes, with the opera teetering, as it should, on the edge of being just too much to bear.

Pagliacci is at London's Little Opera House until 31 March 2011