Puppet pulls the strings

Composer Stephen McNeff and librettist David Wood intend Clockwork as an opera "for everyone aged eight plus", but they do not make it easy for their audience.

The piece lasts around 100 minutes, which is pushing towards the upper limit even for a "grown-up" modern opera; and there are as many as five plot strands wrapped up in a tight narrative bundle. No wonder the programme's synopsis requires two pages of densely packed text.

McNeff and Wood derive Clockwork from Philip Pullman's ultra-slim novella of the same name, and it is not hard to see the appeal of a story that offers birth and death, love and murder, several automata and a smidgen of open-heart surgery.

If only Wood's artfully rhyming text had filleted Pullman's plot of even one narrative thread, things might have been less congested, but it nevertheless has the virtue of saying what it means with little of the highfalutin verbiage of so many contemporary opera librettos.

McNeff 's music, meanwhile, takes what it needs wherever it finds it: a little minimalist tick-tock (of course), a dash of Stravinsky in Soldier's Tale mode, a little bit of Britten and a little bit of Broadway. If that sounds a mess, it isn't; McNeff 's orchestra of barely a dozen players (all beneficiaries of the Philharmonia Orchestra and Martin Music Scholarship Fund, and conducted by Paul Hoskins) is as rich as it needs to be.

While a touch more vocal character would not go amiss, the music is never less than attractive, even if a lot of spoken dialogue is required to keep us abreast of developments.

The production is the work of Unicorn Theatre, which has nearly 60 years' experience in mounting works for children. It shows in the economy of means in Tony Graham's staging, which, thanks in no small part to Russell Craig's single set, easily encompasses the plot's different moods and locations.

The nine singers (some doubling roles) make sure that nearly all the text hits home; but the star of the show is a puppet called Callum in the silent but deadly role of Sir Ironsoul, whose murderous instincts are awoken by the word "devil" and calmed by a sweet song that repeatedly worms its way into McNeff 's musical structures.

When Callum holds the stage, even this wizened operaphile (considerably more "plus" than "eight") pays attention.

Until 3 April. Information: 020 7304 4000.

Clockwork