Opera: The Gospel According to the Other Mary

When I heard about The Gospel According to the Other Mary, I was intrigued, but wary - the last opera I saw that I wasn't familiar with beforehand was Wozzeck, and that didn't turn out well. But they have a trailer on the ENO website, I watched it - and I was hooked. The music was gorgeous. So I booked a £10 seat on the ENO website - cheapest I could get.

Made my way into town quite early, for once. When I got to the Coliseum, I needed to go to the toilet, and was told the nearest ones were downstairs. When I was done, I was conscious that this meant I had even more stairs to climb to the balcony. Plus I couldn't find my way back to the lobby. And I'd passed the lift.. Sod it, I took the lift for once! Turns out to be quite small, with its own operator. But oh, the joy of arrival at the balcony without being oxygen-deprived!

I headed for my seat, in the third row from the back - that's not too far to negotiate those horrible stairs! Actually, I mused as I took my seat - you wouldn't want to be much further forward; certainly, from Row C forward, the balcony rail severely impedes the view. Anyway, my view was fine - but the guy beside me made his excuses just before curtain-up and moved a few rows down, and looking around, it was obvious that there were plenty of empty seats. So I followed suit - except I didn't want to move down, because of the steps and the rail. Instead, I moved more centrally in my row - much more centrally. Into the seats in the next price bracket up. :-) Well, why not?

The show began with a stage that was pretty bare, and remained so. This opening scene was supposed to represent a prison cell, for reasons I never understood. And then the music started. Uh-oh.. where was the music from the trailer?! I suddenly understood why so little of the trailer - which was short anyway - was given over to the music. The music I liked so much is there - just not much of it. Instead, you have music that instead reminded me more of - you know 2001: A Space Odyssey? The bit at the end where he passes through a black hole and everything goes weird? That music.

Then there's the story. Well, the gospel reimagined. Fine, I'm always up for that. Interesting how every time Jesus comes into it, there are three of him, dressed in camouflage jackets. Maybe they're representing the Holy Trinity - three people in one God? I knew I was going to leave early - but I didn't beat the girls sitting forward from me, who left after half an hour. By that stage, I'd have joined them, but they'd got into the story of Lazarus, and I wanted to see what they'd do with it in this avant-garde production.

It took them another half hour to get through that, but I was glad I'd stayed. So, there's a lot of wailing before Lazarus is buried, and they're berating Jesus for not coming fast enough to save his life. They "bury" him in a shroud in a cardboard box. What happens next is cool - this guy in a skintight outfit comes crawling along the stage, under a transparent cover they have over it. He shimmys up to the corpse in the shroud and lies beside it, and gradually it lifts itself and makes its way over to the grieving relatives. I guess this was meant to be the soul returning to the body.

Well, Lazarus joins the others for a meal. I couldn't help remembering the excellent play, The Testament of Mary, that I saw a while ago. This is a play by Colm Tóibín, about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her perspective on events. She had something to say about the resurrection of Lazarus. She wondered whether he actually wanted to be resurrected - nobody had asked him! And afterwards, he seemed strangely quiet, and didn't have much of an appetite. And he smelled funny.

Well, here, Lazarus is having a fine old time, feasting with his chums. Except.. when Martha goes to welcome him back to the land of the living, she throws her arms around someone completely different. Doesn't look like him at all. And then a third fellow jumps up and starts breakdancing, which is quite cool. Is he supposed to be Lazarus as well? Do we now have three persons in one Lazarus?

Ach. When they changed scenes, I left them to their weirdness, and their jangly music. Runs until Friday of next week, if you fancy it. I only hope La Boheme is better tomorrow night; it's my favourite opera, but this is a 1930s production, and has one bad - but non-specific - review. At least I'm a level further down..