Committed performances – but who was the granny? Northern Ireland Opera’s Eugene Onegin reviewed

It’s a critic’s job to pick holes in the dafter aspects of opera productions, but in truth audiences are usually capable of detecting nonsense when they see it. ‘She must be at least 150,’ commented the gentleman sitting behind me, referring to the wheelchair-bound old lady who was trundled on stage at the start of Northern Ireland Opera’s new production of Eugene Onegin, and then parked there, pretty much for the duration.

He had a point. Was she meant to be an elderly Tatyana? Then why was she dressed in modern clothes when the rest of the action played out in the era of Pushkin? Why had she been abandoned in a derelict warehouse (superbly realised, complete with breezeblocks, water stains and metal ducting)? What were her carers doing, when they weren’t inserting themselves into the choreographed crowd scenes? And why hadn’t the poor old dear’s family reported them to the official watchdog?

So many questions, so few of them having anything to do with Eugene Onegin.