Wilton's Music Hall, London
**
Did you know that ostrich shit can make you blind? I am not 100% sure that this is true, but becoming ocularly challenged through the application of bird turd is an important part of the plot of Kurt Schwertsik's opera The Wondrous Tale of Fanferlizzy Sunnyfeet, Broomhill Opera's Christmas show.
The restoration of eyesight, by the way, is achieved by the application of fish bile. Someone at Broomhill should have had a bottle of the latter handy, for after interesting and inspiring work of late, the company has come something of a cropper with this effort.
Premiered in Stuttgart in 1983, Fanferlizzy Sunnyfeet was intended as a seasonal show for kids, and at the time provoked comparisons to that other operatic Christmas favourite, Hansel and Gretel. This is rather wide of the mark, for, if anything, it comes nearer in subject matter to Mozart's The Magic Flute and Strauss's Die Frauohne Schatten. Based on a novella by Clemens Brentano, it's a sprawling, symbolist fairy tale that aims to combine magic with profundity. Unfortunately it achieves neither.
The plot concerns the king dom of Scandalia, whose monarch, Laudamus, is deposed in a violent coup by his slobby son Harum.
At this point good fairy Fanferlizzy comes to the rescue with the aid of the opera's hero, Allingoodtime, who has been given a parthenogenetic birth by Fanferlizzy's pet goat, after the creature has been transformed by magic into a beautiful woman. The various parties then slug it out in various ways that involve sorcery and the aforementioned ostrich until order is restored - or is it?
The point the opera labours to make is that no one, in times of conflict, ultimately emerges as the moral victor. The fact that the message fails to hit home is largely due to a paucity of imagination in the score. The Austrian Schwertsik studied with Stockhausen and cites John Cage as an influence, but here he reverts to a mixture of minimalism and imitation 1920s modernism. Much of it sounds like Stravinsky on an off day, with bits of Kurt Weill thrown in. Punchy conducting from Charles Peebles and splendid singing by Alison Crookendale (Fanferlizzy), James Cleverton (Harum) and Hubert Francis (Allingoodtime) can't disguise the fact that the score just doesn't grab your attention.
The most alarming aspect of the production is its violence. Harum's coup begins in the audience and caused moments of genuine distress when what appeared to be members of the public suddenly leapt to their feet training guns on their fellows. Throughout, Swiss Army knives are glorified as weapons, and at one point we're shown how to open the blade. In any show for kids, this is worrying; after the murder of Damilola Taylor, it is tactless in the extreme.
• Until December 16. Box office: 020-7420 0222.
