Walk on the wild side

It's partly the story that makes Peter Maxwell Davies's last music-theatre piece, Mr Emmet Takes a Walk, so much more coherent and better structured than his first, Eight Songs for a Mad King. Mr Emmet is ticking off items on a "must-do" list before beheading himself under a train, whereas Mad King George is doing nothing in particular except rave on to the birds (represented by musical instruments) and show off a remarkable vocal range.

Eight Songs, with masked instrumentalists from the Manchester ensemble Psappha standing in tubs rather than confined in cages, really needs a conductor to crisp up its extreme dramatic edges. Davies himself made it much fiercer. Kelvin Thomas's madman, initially caged in a loudspeaker, has slight dramatic impact for all his weird showy vocal effects.

Nicole Tibbels and Jonathan Best play various sparring partners for Richard Lloyd-Morgan's Emmet as he gears up to suicide. David Pountney's text and Davies's creepily well-mannered music give little away. Pountney's noir jokes can be clumsily portentous - "It's not every day someone takes the trouble to make friends with death." Davies's theatrical sketches are well-calculated, if melodically anonymous. They don't burn with the conviction of his successful opera, The Lighthouse.

Eight Songs For A Mad King/Mr Emmet Takes A Walk