MARS, Irish National Opera review - silly space oddity with fun stretches

The craft heads to Mars, the music remains below on earth. Which is partly intentional: composer Jennifer Walshe tells us she listened to “synth heavy music” uploaded by astronauts (“a lot of Mike Oldfield and Vangelis”), so we veer from pop to sound-effects, some good (the sparkler held close to a microphone), some ordinary (a chain thrown to the ground sounds exactly like that). It’s a well-executed whole, though, and will be a hit whatever I write about it.

If you witnessed Walshe's The Site of an Investigation at the 2022 Proms, you'll know what to expect. Maybe, though, it will date as quickly as Jerry Springer: The Opera. Yes, the kind of democracy-free capitalism promised by the new "owner" of Mars, a prolific babyfather (Musk, of course), will be a theme until we finish ourselves off, but Mark O'Connell's libretto veers between the would-be reflective (clichés as sung about why the need to explore space and not ourselves), the downright banal and the humorous (some good ideas, like the notion that one of the spacewomen left behind the USB stick with the entire Criterion Collection of great movies at home, so endless reruns of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are the staple fare: cue a fun sequence). At first the four singers merely function as a vocal quartet – they don't seem to need to be operatic, as sopranos Nina Guo (pictured above) and Jade Phoenix, mezzos Sarah Richmond and Doreen Curran, palpably are – and interact well with the heavily miked orchestra conducted by Elaine Kelly behind them, but it mostly feels like improvisation. Life on Mars in Act Two gives us more interesting material for a true opera: ensembles that verge on the haunting, a threat of conformity which involves the instrumentalists singing too (brilliant), a break-free role for the rebel, scientist Sally (Guo, managing to act convincingly while sustaining some very high lines, like Phoenix), who finds a very weird solution to the awful Martian patriarchy which I won't reveal, as its outlandishness is part of the pleasure. I fretted that the whole thing would just come to a halt, but the ending truly feels like one. 

Walshe co-directs with Tom Creed, faultlessly, and the multi-media works throughout, with ingenious video designs by Conan McIvor. MARS deserves an outing to the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre, at least, and while this jury's out on the actual substance, its execution is first-rate and accounts for three sell-out nights to audiences of all ages in Dublin's Abbey Theatre after its Galway Festival premiere. A potential masterpiece along the lines of Least Like the Other, an INO success, it isn't, but if it wins new young admirers, that in itself is good enough. 

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