The Alonetimes review – frenetic, funny and exhilarating music theatre

Sohmen Concert Hall, Schwarzman Centre, Oxford
Six performers navigate a disjointed world of online slang, loneliness and absurdity in the UK premiere of Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables’ thrillingly original collaboration

As we found our seats, a druidic figure wearing a string of vapes as a necklace sat on stage swathed in white fabric and smoke, emitting close-miked mouth noises amid a rising chorus of percussive hisses and rattles. Then dancing flashlights, reverb and thunderous drum rolls. Later came monologues delivered with quiet, skin-crawling sincerity or pounded out as a kind of manic rap and comically dysfunctional text chats projected on the backcloth. Not to mention the dance breaks. There was an angular, hyper-controlled trio fluent in the language of modern ballet and a hands-on-hips traditional number as faux-folk lyrics scrolled in gothic script and a hefty synthetic beat throbbed below.

The first collaboration between Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables – two of the most distinctive creators in music theatre today – The Alonetimes was never likely to adhere to the conventional playbook of opera. The programme for its UK premiere describes the work as “a fragmented archaeology of personal stories”. Alternatively: there is no single linear plot but instead six performers, who step constantly in and out of unnamed roles, switch between playing instruments and singing, form a taut Greek chorus and stand alone in the spotlights.