Kate Kellaway 

Anna Nicole review – an abject story told indecently well

The right balance of pathos, intelligence and vulgarity make this real-life opera fly, writes Kate Kellaway
  
  

Anna Nicole
Eva-Maria Westbroek and Alan Oke in Royal Opera’s Anna Nicole revival. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Photograph: Tristram Kenton/Guardian

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole, making a comeback to the ROH (its premiere was in 2011), is opera as contemporary cautionary tale. It is based on the true story of Anna Nicole Smith, a Texas stripper from a trailer trash family (“no love, no joy, no heart, no air con” is how she describes her background). She deforms her body with breast enhancements and transforms her fate. She becomes a Playboy model, marries an 89-year-old oil billionaire and evolves into a full-breasted, empty celebrity with her own TV show. The side effect of relentless surgery is chronic back pain and an addiction to painkillers that will lead to her death.

Eva-Maria Westbroek brings out her pathos magnificently, especially when, in puce bodysuit, her pole dancing comes close to sacrifice, the pole her cross. Richard Thomas’s libretto (he co-wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera) tells the abject story indecently well and Richard Jones’s production, with suitably vulgar set by Miriam Buether, is imaginatively uncompromising (I liked the paparazzi with camera heads). There is excellent work from Susan Bickley as Anna Nicole’s mother, Alan Oke as the geriatric billionaire, Rod Gilfry as the creepily opportunistic lawyer and Andrew Rees as slippery Doctor Yes.

Above all, Turnage’s disturbing score, describing an American dream turned nightmare, triumphs. He excels at predatory harmonies (although there is also skittish light relief in the introduction to Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken and Anna’s first husband). But what gives the opera its power is the persistent disconnect between score and subject: intelligent urgency in contrast to dismaying mindlessness and the sleazily grotesque.

Until 24 September. Royal Opera House, London.

 

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