Opera Up Close

Opera can overwhelm you completely. The drama, the music, the emotions – see a great performance and you can come out in tears. But only too often, you’re far up in the gods, half a mile away from the stage and with only a partial view of the stage, and believe me, it’s really difficult to feel anything much in that situation other than a numb backside.

What you won't see at Opera Up Close's Boheme...

OperaUpClose gets rid of that distance. As the name suggests, it’s in-your-face.  La Boheme in a room above a pub – you’re sitting right on top of the singers, intimately involved with their lives, loves, and tragedies.

Theatre in pubs has been thriving for years. Why opera in pubs never has, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s that swanky-posh-upper-class thing some people have about opera – it’s not an opera till the fat lady sings, and unless you’re all dressed up in furs and tiaras, with a lobster supper and a couple of bottles of champagne.

At the Cock Tavern Theatre, Kilburn High Road [map] it’s more likely to be jeans, sweatshirt and a couple of pints of beer.

The production removes the historical distance from the opera by updating it from 19th century Paris to modern North London. Mimi is a Romanian cleaner who’s fallen among a load of nice middle class English boys pretending to be artists – it’s all fresh and new, but it works, letting you focus on the tragedy of the individual relationships instead of the chocolate-box pictures of Montmartre that often deaden the opera’s emotional core.

I don’t think the traditionalists will like it – but if you love the music, but get frustrated with the rather tired productions and stand-and-deliver performances of the big opera houses, this is definitely worth seeking out (though a warning, Kilburn is a bit of a trek from the centre – Kilburn on the Jubilee Line, or Kilburn Park on the Bakerloo).

Of course the one thing you can’t get into a tiny room above a pub – besides the audience of just 40, the cast and the set – is an orchestra, so this opera is performed to the accompaniment of a single piano.

The really fantastic news for opera lovers who take to this concept is that not only has the season for La Boheme been extended for a month – it was due to close in January, but will now stay open till late February – but the director is planning more operas in this space.

Where: Cock Tavern Theatre, Kilburn High Road

When: 5 January  till February 20, 730 on Tuesday to Saturday and 3 pm on Sunday, plus a 2pm matinee on Saturdays

How much: £15 (£10 concessions)

Photo by Andra Puggioni on flickr