La Didone

There's a sort of arm-wrestling contest going on in this International Festival contribution from The Wooster Group. On one side of the stage, at least as far as the surtitles are concerned, is a 1641 opera, La Didone, on the other the same cast inhabit a 1965 Italian science fiction movie, Planet of the Vampires.

At times the two are in a tense balance: at some points the sci-fi gains the upper hand; at other the opera. By the end I would have to declare La Didone itself the outright winner, largely because it has much the best tunes, but a late rally as the cast re-enact the movie's delirious final twist makes it a closer contest than you might expect.

So what's the point of this extraordinary juxtaposition? Well, both pieces are about people acting under the influence of outside forces - in one case the gods and in the other an alien life form. Opera Seria tends to be static with the characters standing and declaiming their arias. Italian B movies made to be dubbed for the American market tended to have their actors speaking their stilted dialogue in an awkward style. And the silver space suits of Mario Bava's film, a director often described as baroque, admirably suit the opera's story of Carthage's Queen Dido.

It's all a bit crowded at the beginning, with storms at sea mixed up with storms in space, but with the arrival of both parties in alien lands it settles down much more happily, It's at this point, too, that we properly get to meet the production's undoubted star as Hai-Ting Chinn becomes Dido. Her glorious, soaring voice commands attention whatever planetary mayhem is happening around her. She's well matched by John Young's Aeneas and Andrew Nolen's frustrated suitor Iarbas.

The onstage music, provided by a mixture of baroque and electronic instruments, plus, of all things, an accordion, is a complete success - sometimes discrete, sometimes dominating, always in total balance with the production.

So does it work? It did for me. I was always engaged, frequently amused and the music is ravishing - not least a vigorous hunting chorus. Some people did walk out, but most stayed and experienced an early opera, very well sung and played, albeit with somewhat unusual trimmings.