Aviva Studios, Manchester
Kip Williams’ in-the-round staging, with the action live-projected onto enormous screens, can be disorientating, but Du Yun’s Pulitzer-winning work is compelling and kaleidoscopic
English National Opera takes a bold leap, selecting one of the most uncompromising pieces of 21st-century music theatre for the first new opera staged in its northern base. Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone, which won the Chinese American composer the 2017 Pulitzer prize, tackles human trafficking head on in an allegorical tale of two angels that fall – literally – into the clutches of a dysfunctional couple who hesitate for all of five minutes before deciding to mutilate and exploit them.
For this inaugural production, a collaboration with Factory International and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, they have recruited Kip Williams whose The Picture of Dorian Gray dazzled the West End and Broadway. The innovative Australian director employs his breathless technical wizardry to fashion a dizzying in-the-round staging.
