The Lulu plays of Frank Wedekind, like the opera of Berg's based on them, shocked early 20th-century audiences with their flagrant depiction of rampant, amoral female sexuality. Olga Neuwirth's American Lulu, co-commissioned by The Opera Group and Komische Oper, Berlin, attempts a reworking of the Berg through the eyes of a modern Lulu.
Her story is played out against the background of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, with interpolations of civil rights speeches by Martin Luther King, poems by the African–American poet June Jordan and New Orleans jazz. Promising as the concept sounds, the execution is disappointing to say the least — at times frankly amateurish.
For a start, this Lulu emerges no more sympathetically than Berg's: she's equally amoral and callous, and the (less than subtle) pointing up of endemic racism and sexual oppression does little to deepen the picture. While undeniably attractive, Angel Blue lacks, in John Fulljames’s production, the physical animality the role requires, though vocally she is impressive.
Neuwirth draws on material from the Berg, but her own is uninspiring, with leaden vocal lines and undifferentiated, block-like scoring. The music for the jazz band in Act 3 is a welcome relief, but Jacqui Dankworth’s idiomatic delivery is hampered by the psychobabble she has to sing.
Other roles are sung with vigour and style by Robert Winslade Anderson (Clarence), Donald Maxwell (Dr Bloom), Jonathan Stoughton (Jimmy) and Paul Curievici (Photographer/Young Man). The London Sinfonietta plays with precision under Gerry Cornelius.
Until Sep 24 (020 7922 2922, boxoffice@youngvic.org, youngvic.org)
