Crime and punishment

As I descended, then descended again, then again, to get to my seat in the subterranean, uncomfortable Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, I thought gloomily of the number of miserable evenings I have spent there, and reflected that Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony was probably all too apt a name for what I was about to experience.

As I descended, then descended again, then again, to get to my seat in the subterranean, uncomfortable Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House, I thought gloomily of the number of miserable evenings I have spent there, and reflected that Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony was probably all too apt a name for what I was about to experience. Who could read Kafka’s perfect and terrible tale without feeling that there was nothing to add, that any attempt to make it into a drama or musical enterprise would be impertinent and de trop? In the event, this 80-minute realisation, put on by the enterprising Music Theatre Wales, was gripping, though it is still a watering-down of the original.