There’s not much to look at in Oliver Mears’ new production of Bernstein’s 1952 one-acter Trouble in Tahiti. A mid-century modern teak double bed (paisley coverlet, pills on the nightstand); a sleek leather office chair; a punchbag thwacked in time with the composer’s irrepressible syncopations. Even these minimal narrative anchors slide off sporadically, though most scene changes are marked solely by lighting in the subtlest of split-stage effects. Only the duck-egg walls are here to stay. Within them: the coolly miserable marriage of Dinah and Sam, all disappointment and frustration.
In Mears’ staging, there’s no mistaking the fact that the opera’s action is psychological. Sure, the lurid peppiness of the amplified a cappella jazz trio is summoned by Dinah turning on her radio, the singers appearing overhead in suits and shades, their tribute to suburbia snazzily energetic. But their commentary quickly becomes invisible as we listen into his’n’hers sides of the story. Henry Neill’s Sam is smooth but earnest, his top notes disconcertingly limpid as he begs Dinah to be kind. Wallis Giunta is an ideal Dinah, heartbreaking as she recounts her dream of “a quiet place”, can’t-look-away awful in her drunken re-enactment of mid-century racist tropes in the film she’s just seen. Jonah McGovern’s peripheral presence as Young Junior ups the emotional stakes. But nothing is more upsetting than the silence that settles between the couple in their final scene.
A Quiet Place picks up the story 30 years later. It begins with a car crash (appallingly vivid as audio in total darkness) that kills Dinah. The rest is aftermath, focused on Sam and his two children: Junior (gay, draft-dodging, “mentally ill”) and Dede, who is married to François, previously Junior’s lover. Bit-parts chatter nastily at the funeral. Sarah Pring’s Mrs Doc is one love-to-hate standout performance, Nick Pritchard’s hapless funeral director another. Rebecca Afonwy-Jones’s Susie provides rare warmth amid the power suits. Grant Doyle’s middle-aged Sam is raw and raging, Rowan Pierce’s Dede sweetly compelling, while Elgan Llyr Thomas’s François tries to hold it all together in flashes of vocal sumptuousness. Best of all is Neill’s return as Junior, his Marilyn Monroe impression utterly convincing as he torments his father, his vulnerability elsewhere almost unbearable.
But the problem – as others have observed – is the opera itself. Too long, too atonal, too grandiose, too banal: just a few of the common complaints. This production uses a recent attempt to solve its problems by Garth Edwin Sunderland, whose lean, mean reduced orchestrations also bring a Stravinsky-ish clarity to the entire double bill, nattily played by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under Nicholas Chalmers. But too much of A Quiet Place remains cacophonous, meandering or both. And while the operatic pairing was Bernstein’s idea, it does the later work no favours at all.
• At the Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House, London, until 24 October.
