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The Review - THEATRE by DAMIAN O'LOUGHLIN
Published: 19 February 2009

Operetta in need of a ‘nip/tuck’

SKIN DEEP
Sadler's Wells

BEING a huge fan of Armando Iannucci’s work but in no way a fan of opera, watching his new operetta was always going to be an interesting prospect.
Unfortunately, it was more a curious disappointment than a cultural joy.
The idea of a satirical swipe at our image-obsessed culture using the melodrama of opera sounds good, but this show, based on a maniacal plastic surgeon, is flawed and in need of a bit of liposuction itself.
On the face of it, Skin Deep is highly polished, the orchestra is fantastic and the singers of Opera North are world class. But below the surface you find uninspired music from composer David Sawer and a libretto which contains frequent glimpses of the man who brought us The Day Today’s wit but not enough real bite to have you gripped.
There are some laughs at the beginning as we are introduced to Dr Needlemeier’s exclusive surgery in the Swiss Alps and meet a string of characters obsessed with “putting right what nature got wrong”.
However, this initial deluge of humour gets lost in the auditorium as Act I plays out; this is in part due to the fact the audience will always miss some of an opera singer’s words, but mostly because the audience simply didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
There were no auditory cues from the orchestra, no bangs on the timpani or comic slides on the trombone. The Carry On section of the orchestra was hardly used at all.
This confusion with the format got worse as the doctor’s devilish plan to use off-cuts from the rich and famous to create an elixir of life is revealed. Act I ended and nobody clapped. You could see a few people twitching as if they wanted to but no one was willing to commit to applause
just in case it was the wrong thing to do.
I did laugh and titter a few times as I strained my ears to catch the lyrics. And the final scenes involving a lot of prosthetic nudity are hilarious, if not a bit hysterical.
But all through the show I kept on thinking of an inspired sketch from The Armando Iannucci Show in which an opera company perform Ibiza Uncut.
Over four minutes it’s brilliant; over two-and-a-half hours it’s stretching it a bit, to say the least.
I wanted to like it, and I did like it, but it was more an intriguing theatrical experiment than an outright triumph.
Until February 21 (in rep)

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