Scrappy and out of sorts

“LA BOHEME”, Lowry, Salford
OPERA North once again pulls out and polishes this (astoundingly) 17-year-old Phyllida “Mamma Mia” Lloyd production and for once doesn’t quite hit the Bohemian on the noggin.

Past revivals of Lloyd’s exuberant romantic tragedy have been absolutely spot on: beautifully sung, magnificently played and acted with verve and youthful abandon in her Fifties setting.

The beauty of this particular production, with its action paintings, its on-stage motorcycles, its Marilyn Monroe lookalike (a disturbingly realistic male character) and its low dives and dawn rendezvous, has always been its strongly-acted performances.

Lloyd at the start, and since then two directors of revivals have all taken the trouble to make the characters believable young starving artists, full of detail and expression — and not just in their voices.

This falls down a little this time: the orchestra, under Richard Farnes, shines with lush, bright sound and a quick pace and consistency, but virtually every other aspect of the evening seems slightly out of sorts.

Though the singing was strong and attractive, it wasn’t always loud enough — at least at my seat — to overcome the orchestra, a problem that afflicted the otherwise well-cast tenor Bulent Bezduz particularly, though the Marcello of Marcin Bronikowski was far from lusty either.

The women redeemed the group somewhat, thanks to Anne Sophie Dupreis’ strong and lovely Mimi and Sarah Fox as the bawdy Musetta.

The basic problem, more obvious at the start but improving as the evening rolls on, was that the tenor and baritone didn’t seem terribly comfortable.

Both seemed happiest when acting to the conductor rather than the audience, and neither acted well — a pity, for when performed by great singers who can also act, the production really takes off.

Here Marcin and Bulent help the general milling around to no great end, and a similar situation exists in the Cafe Momus act, where there is a lot of movement, little of which appears directed at anyone or anything in particular, the result being rather scrappy and ill-at-ease.