La bohème

Addictive Watching

La Bohème

by Giacomo Puccini, English libretto by Becca Marriott in an adaptation with Adam Spreadbury-Maher

Opera Makers and Arcola Theatre, Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre, Dalston until 24^th August

Review by Heather Moulson

A chaotic set of unwashed plates and takeaway paraphernalia are the giveaway that this adaption of Puccini’s opera has contemporarily setting.  Christmas day, and the casually dressed Mark is pining for his lost love Musetta and for their lost Christmas plans.  In a smooth baritone, Thom Isherwood sets out Mark’s, and our, journey.  He is joined by Ralph, an unsuccessful playwright, played by fine voiced tenor Martins Smaukstelis, and they reflect on their poverty and hide from the landlord.  Their situation seems hopeless, yet with underlying humour and optimism, the friends fight back.

Mark goes off to the pub, while Ralph has a surprise visitor, an attractive neighbour Mimi, who has problems of her own.   The couple fall in love and in its immediate afterglow, they join the lovelorn Mark. 

Designer Becky Dee Trevenen’s clever set has a lit-up bar as a backdrop for the skilled musicians, the musical director Panaretos Kyriatzidis on piano, and Alison Holford on cello, who also rings the bar closing bell beautifully. 

In a very slick and vibrant entrance, Musetta sweeps in with charismatic glamour while interacting with the audience.  (Wine pouring is involved!)    As the opportunistic Musetta, Valerie Wong is highly alluring and carries great stage presence.  After some conflict over Musetta’s gold-digging charms, Mark wins back her love. 

Puccini’s large cast is cut down to four, just two friends and the women with whom they are besotted.  Originally performed at The Kings Head theatre in 2016, Becca Marriott and Adam Spreadbury-Maher’s adaption of this iconic piece, which is directed in intricate detail by the librettist Becca Marriott, works well in this studio space.  This “radically repositioned” version is a justifiable sell-out and a great one hour and fifty minutes. 

The versatile Marriott also takes the leading role of Mimi, but both sopranos give a cut-glass performance of tragedy, helplessness and humour. 

The plot of the first half may be a case of so far, so good, but Act Two presents a far darker picture.   Subdued and apt lighting, designed by Nao Nagai, emphasises the changed mood.  A lonely spotlight features Mimi in a very bad way indeed with drug addiction, while the estranged Ralph is ragged over losing his one true love.   In a desperate act for help, Mimi reappears in Ralph’s life.   In due course, and despite Musetta and Mark’s attempt to relieve Mimi’s suffering, it ends in fatal consequences, climaxing in a disturbing tableau of co-dependency and drug addiction.

This pared-back version of La bohème reveals the rawness of the plot, its seediness with its sublimity, its muckiness with its magnificence, drilling right into the heart of Puccini’s most poignant masterpiece.

Heather Moulson, August 2024

Photography by MG