Carmen Disruption, Almeida Theatre ★★★★★

Culture Whisper says ★★★★★
Below is our preview, which gives background information about the show. Click here to read our Carmen Disruption review.

Simon Stephens, playwright
One of the biggest names in play writing, the multi-award-winning playwright has penned edgy dramas such as Punk Rock and the recent Birdland, along with meteoric hits including his stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and modernised version of Ibsen’s The Doll's House. Stephens's skill for adaptation will be showcased again this autumn as he returns to Chekov in a hotly-anticipated reworking of The Cherry Orchard, premiering at the Young Vic London next month.

Simon Stephens, background
As bastion of the British ‘in-yer-face’ school of theatre, which seeks to shock and affect by refusing to shy away from controversy or vulgarity and with much experience of portraying those of the edges of society, Stephens has rich creative scope in Bizet's Carmen opera. Gypsy passion, seduction and suicide made Carmen the most controversial operas of its time, with accusations of amorality and contemporary outrage.

Simon Stephens, Carmen Disruption
Carmen Disruption, at the Almeida Theatre London 2015, is a fragmentary, modernist rendering of the famous story, which translates the operatic beauty into moments of loneliness and failed connection, shaped by shades of isolation in the vein of modernist Virginia Woolf. The characters are borrowed from Bizet, but cast into an unnamed urbanity. Carmen becomes a rent boy, while Don Jose is a petty criminal cab driver and the seductive toreador is an investment banker. And with a dash of meta-textuality, Stephens introduces the figure of the Singer, who has forsaken a life of arias and acclaim to wander the streets.