Oreste (Wilton's Music Hall/ROH, 8 November)

I actually had to check with other publications that this was a professional production, so terrible--really, just awful--was the staging here. I mean awful in the sense of people bouncing off shaking sets, actors awkwardly jumping up and down a set, that kind of thing--church-basement stuff. As an undergraduate production this would have been fine; as something with the ROH imprimatur, this was almost barely recognizable as professional opera. The aesthetic for the production seemed to be the old Splatterhouse game for the Sega Genesis: one character in a Jason jumpsuit, blood spattering over a window in the prelude. At the end all of the cast took turns whacking someone with a hammer, emerging covered in blood.

If you closed your eyes, it was totally different: this was sung beautifully throughout. The poor performers had to act in this thing, though, and I'll say they did their best. But what are you supposed to do, as Oreste did, when you spend most of the third act chained to a radiator, and the entirety of three hours twitching like someone with severe PTSD?

There's this game of chicken, yeah, with modish opera stagings? If you blink--if you think it's garbage--you're unsophisticated; if you play along, you're in. Well, I'm calling bullshit on this whole production, save for the (beautiful) singing. This was less regietheater than Reggietheatre: like, done by your cousin Reggie, who works in pizza delivery and collects knives. An edgy production is not as such a valuable intervention--it can still suck, like this one did.

The Libertine (Theatre Royal Haymarket, 7 November)

Okay, so, fine: I was looking for something trashy. Actor from Mama Mia + role originated by John Malkovich + seemingly pointless West End revival + warning about adult content--I mean, my hopes were pretty high. And then it was...pretty good? Maybe too good for this script? First Shopping and Fucking, and now this: I'm starting to think actors don't have any right to disappointment me like this, taking something I was hoping would be a bit camp and a bit dreadful and approaching it with a workmanlike sense of seriousness.

As with so many things (Brexit, neoliberalism), I think Johnny Depp was partially to blame. I'd seen the movie version, where Depp is in full "I found these scarves and also my accent in a car boot sale" mode, and Rochester's nose falls off, and there are nipples a'plenty. And, clearly, this production looked at that, and then did what any human would do and went in exactly the opposite direction. So there's nary nose nor nipple tweaked here. If anything, everyone involved takes the material a bit too seriously. Dominic Cooper played Rochester like he was auditioning for the lead in some interchangeable historical series; judging from his performance, he could play anything from Cromwell to Francis Bacon to Jack the Ripper to Christopher Marlowe. He was definitely one (1) unit of Convincing Handsome British Man, with just enough of a suggestion of inner turmoil. At times what he really reminded me of was Roman Atkinson in Blackadder, only less detached from his situation, and with less ridiculousness (at least as staged) going on around him. And, again, he was fine--just never as interesting as in Rochester's prologue, where he genuinely got to be a bit loose and raucous and sort of ready for anything.

And this was the problem, really: who wants just enough debauchery? Everything was judicious and well-staged and orderly, but the play itself involved (among other things) the Earl of Rochester having a conversation with Charles II while both are in mid-coitus. If someone could puncture this play's self-seriousness with its own self-seriousness, hilarious things could be mined from the heritage industries. The conceit that Rochester was a sort of existential hero, not really enjoying his routine debauches because philosophy, inoculates this script from being trashy--and, often, fun. At least Johnny Depp--and that is such a sad way to begin a sentence, "At least Johnny Depp"--brought a whiff of the outre, however faint and dismal that whiff was. There was nothing weird here: Charles II was shrewd, Rochester was played like the mopiest member of his rugby team; everyone, guttersnipes to monarchs, played their parts sturdily, as if auditioning for the next Pirates sequel. The dead hand of the culture industries sort of patted my hopes of a camp spectacular to a worthy sleep--not a terrible way to spend a Monday, but what a frantic dashing of hopes. More than anything else, this was worthy: like converting a Rochester couplet (whether I fucked the boy, or the boy you) into an exam answer ("bisexuality was an accepted part of eighteenth-century masculinity.")

The Nose (ROH, 1 November)

A headache. A lot of my excitement about twentieth-century opera comes from Alex Ross' book; and in theory this is the sort of thing I really like. And I'm absolutely, absolutely convinced that this was performed to within an inch of its life. But, again: a headache. I'm not entirely sure how you write satire in the early years of a totalitarian state, as Russia of the 1930s was. I mean A for effort, really. But this was all one anxious, clenched satirical muscle without anything to sort of hurl itself against, accompanied by music that gave me an actual near panic attack. (Career-related, incidentally.) Some of the images will stick with me for a while, particularly the ring of noses on legs. But this was the sort of thing I find I appreciate more than like; and this turned out to be the wrong night for appreciating things.

Cymbeline review (RSC/Barbican, 31 October)

Well, the Victorians liked it: adultery and English national self-determination. Maybe if it had dogging, or the Bake-Off, we'd like it more now?

I actually walked out of Imogen, the half-witted "reclamation" of Cymbeline that played at the Globe a few months ago. And there was, happily, nary a tracksuit in sight here. What there was was, well, Cymbeline, which is frankly a bit of a melancholy mess. The RSC continues its love for this kind of very D&G "Italian" mode, familiar to anyone who has seen their productions these last few seasons (The White Devil, or particularly Two Gentlemen--where the Italian bits were longer, more fun, and there was a dog.) Did a bunch of designer menswear fall off a truck in the Midlands a couple of years ago? The song that introduced the scenes in Italy was maybe the energetic high point of the production.

England, frankly, came off less well--as a bit duller, a bit messier, a bit more post-apocalyptic-y (but with less sort of Mad Max energy) than Italy. And this is fine, if anything interesting could be found to do with it. But nothing happened, particularly: England was this sort of place of ruins, with one torture-y dungeon (presumably where they keep the citizens of the world), and that was it. I think the production's heart was still in Italy.

And, oh, the gimmicks. Bits of the production were done in Italian, French, and (heavens) Latin, with projected subtitles. I know I for one am fucking sick of going to Shakespeare for, like, the language, so glad to have replaced that with pidgin "Romanes eunt dominus" stuff--I'm sure the three people in the audience over the course of the production's run who could understand spoken Latin probably appreciated it.

This production was no doubt designed pre-Brexit, and has spend its time in the world in this new reality, in which no doubt England is going to suck for a while. I wanted to cheer when the English enthusiastically reaffirmed their support for Roman taxation--the happiest of happy endings--but otherwise this went past agreeably enough, never anywhere particularly excelling. Oliver Johnson as Jachimo was so, so good that he distorted the play, his seduction of Imogen far more interesting than what felt like the half-odd-hour of battle scenes done in irritating slow-and-regular motion. This is almost certainly my thick load of personal prejudices, but compared to the fancy Italians and their sick continental beats the English wildlings--dreadlocks and war-whoops--had all the vigor of those animated animals they have at Rainforest Cafe. Even what happens to Cloten feels sort of dull, violence and boredom one particular vision of how post-Brexit life will unfold in Milford Haven. This was a painless way to cross off another of Shakespeare's plays in performance; but only Jachimo pointed towards the wonderfully meta joyride this might have been.