Carmen Disruption

by Simon Stephens 

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 2 May 2015

The play, directed by Michael Longhurst and designed by Lizzie Clachan with music by Simon Slater, dramatises the predicament of a Singer (Sharon Small) whose sense of self is unravelling as her commitments to sing the role of Carmen take her from place to place with no connection to the world outside taxis, briefly rented apartments, and the opera theatres of Europe. Four other characers in a particular unnamed city are also adrift in loneliness - a rent boy named Carmen (Jack Farthing), a female taxi driver Don José (Noma Dumezweni), a young student Micaëla (Katie West) and a futures trader Escamillo (John Light). Viktoria Vizin prowls the stage dressed as a conventional Carmen, singing snatches of the opera, or other lyrics, to the accompaniment of two cellists (Jamie Cameron and Harry Napier). 

The stalls audience can only enter the auditorium via the dressing rooms and the stage itself, passing the massive body of a bull lying amidst tumbled bricks and general disarray. The cellists are already onstage, tuning and playing snatches of Bizet's opera, or practising difficult rhythmic flourishes. Once the play begins, the five characters wander around this desolate space speaking in long monologues, almost never connecting with one another except in fleeting collisions or glances which are mere irritations to their intense preoccupations with their own lives. We can see aspects of the familiar operatic characters in their namesakes, but this is more by refraction than by clunky correspondence, and the result is compelling and distressing in equal measure. These lives are so isolated, so self-directed, that the Singer's experience of alienation is only slightly more extreme than the loneliness experienced by the others. As their stories weave in and out of each other, the picture of an event which they all witness gradually emerges - but even in this catastrophe none of them really sees or listens to anyone else.

The performances are excellent - pitch perfect one might say. Jack Farthing's Carmen is confident in the his skills as a rent boy but suddenly and frighteningly vulnerable if the script goes wrong. Noma Dumesweni portrays an agonised Don José torn between an unspecified (but evidently grubby) obligtion and a desire to reconnect with her son. Katie West's Micaëla captures exactly the jilted student's obsessive ruminations about why her lecturer-lover has abandoned her. John Light's Escamillo is thrillingly self-confident, as a toreador should be - but in  profession about which many in the audience would currently have reservations. While all these strong characters reveal themselves, Sharon Small provides a startling insight into the bland emptiness that must underlie supposedly glamorous international travel tied to one repetitive task. As each character speaks, the others move around the stage with carefully conceived gestures resonating with what is being told, often involving the significant flourish of a smartphone - that connecting device which so often seems to trigger the modern experience of alienation and loneliness.

A review of the original German production of this play refers to a 40-strong cast of extras setting the scene. This production is far more intimate, but there is no sense that it is limited by its smaller scale - indeed it is powerful and at times unexpectedly moving. It is fascinating that some plays seem able to be shown in such radically different configurations - this example is the reverse of the production of 'Light Shining in Buckinghamshire', currently at the National Theatre with a large cast, but originally shown in 1976 with only six actors.