Note: This review is from the 2012 Fringe

Opera / 150 min / £68 / £30 / £16 /

Image credit: Jen Turner

Showing @ Festival Theatre, 17, 19 & 20 Aug

In the late 17th century, composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier took the great biblical story of ‘brotherly’ love, David and Jonathon, and put it to beautiful baroque music. In 2012, director Andreas Homoki took that music, put it in a box and starved it of oxygen. Homoki’s flat and confused direction alongside designer Paul Zoller’s choice to set the production inside an Ikea storage box, effectively removing any sense of time or scene changes, left many in the audience puzzled and some even infuriated. Thankfully, the performances compensated for the flaws. In particular Neal Davies as Saul was both vocally imposing, but also created an effectively paranoid and delusional King. A lost opportunity to do justice to the work of a lesser known, if not forgotten, musical master.

Showing as part of the Edinburgh International Festival 2012.