Reaching for heaven

If opera has a future, it may lie with small companies that find new ways to present unfamiliar work.

For nearly 20 years, Music Theatre Wales has toured with chamber-scale productions of contemporary operas that have little or nothing to do with the lumbering machinations of conventional opera houses. At least two of its shows (Peter Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse and Philip Glass's The Fall of the House of Usher) are classics, conclusive proof that even in opera, economy of means need not mean economy of effect.

I am not sure the same goes for this project, although no one could accuse it of lacking ambition. If anything, Lynne Plowman's House of the Gods tries too hard. Martin Riley's libretto sets the scene plainly enough in First World War London, but draws on an immense range of sources to forge an unwieldy amalgam of music hall, magic lantern show, anti-war agitprop, science fiction parable, puppet theatre and much else besides.

Gods and goddesses mingle with mad scientists and shell-shocked war veterans, leaving Plowman's music so little room that her natural lyricism is always held in check. There are moments of cartoon zaniness that Shostakovich would enjoy (the one sex scene gleefully echoes his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), and Plowman's use of folk tunes just about avoids the trap of overshadowing her own writing. Yet her individuality surfaces-only intermittently, in, for example, the use of a musical saw; too often her music has to run like mad simply to stand still.

Michael McCarthy's production changes scenes and gets people on and off stage with familiar efficiency, but the singers' body language is all too conventionally operatic. Under conductor Michael Rafferty, the 11 players and five singers cope well, and Fiona Kimm as the raddled goddess Ma is superb. Somewhere in here, a riot of an evening is struggling to get out; it never quite makes it.

. Tonight (020 7304 4000)

Music Theatre Wales: House Of The Gods
Linbury Studio Theatre At Royal Opera House
Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 9DD