Skip to main content

Coraline review – creepy adaptation of Neil Gaiman's tale will turn kids on to opera

Barbican, London
Terrific performances and special effects ensure children in the audience love Mark-Anthony Turnage’s take on the cult novella

Given its world premiere by the Royal Opera at the Barbican, Coraline is Mark-Anthony Turnage’s fourth opera, though it also marks something of a new departure for its composer. It’s his first stage work specifically aimed at a family audience, and consequently avoids the overtly combative or scatological stances of its predecessors.

Its source is Neil Gaiman’s creepy cult novella about a restless 11-year-old, whose exploration of her parents’ new home takes her into a parallel world beyond a bricked-up doorway in her parents’ drawing room. The Other World seemingly offers limitless comfort and enjoyment, but its inhabitants mysteriously have buttons sewn over their eyes, and it soon becomes apparent that the love offered by Coraline’s Other Mother and Father is sinister in its controlling possessiveness. Rory Mullarkey’s libretto deftly condenses Gaiman’s narrative, though he makes some subtle changes: Coraline’s distracted real Father is no longer a writer but an inventor, whose contraptions now play an important part in the opera’s denouement; and we’ve lost both the talking cat, which is Coraline’s companion in both worlds.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2pQ5ReT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV
Post a Comment
Read more

When Brooklyn was queer: telling the story of the borough's LGBTQ past

In a new book, Hugh Ryan explores the untold history of queer life in Brooklyn from the 1850s forward, revealing some unlikely truths For five years Hugh Ryan has been hunting queer ghosts through the streets of Brooklyn, amid the racks of New York’s public libraries, among its court records and yellow newspaper clippings to build a picture of their lost world. The result is When Brooklyn Was Queer, a funny, tender and disturbing history of LGBTQ life that starts in an era, the 1850s, when those letters meant nothing and ends before the Stonewall riots started the modern era of gay politics. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H9Zexs
Post a Comment
Read more