You can see Graham Vick’s work at La Scala or the New York Met. But if you want to be directed by him, you need to go to Birmingham. The Tower Ballroom is a sticky-floored former nightspot out by Edgbaston Reservoir, artfully trashed by Block9, the people behind Banksy’s Dismaland. You crunch across the tarmac, pass the humanoid rats and the drug dealer with his prostitute cards (‘Sonyetka: Exotic Dancing – Russian Lessons’) and enter the crowd. Suddenly Vick’s on you: barking under his breath that you need to move and, should you fail to comply, shoving you firmly out of the way. Seconds later, a double bed careens through, or the space fills with knife-wielding brides in blood-smeared dresses.
It’s old news that Vick’s Birmingham Opera Company does things differently. True, Vick has acquired mannerisms, and they were all on display in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In Vick-world policemen are always thugs, extras stumble about like zombies, and the politics are positively quaint (a sacred icon had the face of Mrs Thatcher). What’s astonishing, after 20 years of site-specific community-based work, is how fresh it still feels, delivering a thrill that goes far beyond the schoolboy delight of hearing Eric Greene (as Izmailov senior) bawling ‘Cocksucker!’ in a ringing baritone.
Perhaps that’s the benefit of throwing the company’s entire resources at a single, all-or-nothing show each year; and of staking everything, every time, on Vick’s ability to motivate his community performers and professional cast. Their commitment is what creates that unsettling BOC atmosphere, and gives the choral singing such a raw, almost frightening physicality. You’re sucked under. The moment (replicated in most BOC productions, but always overwhelming) when the lights flash out, the orchestra explodes, and everyone around you starts singing, is surely the closest that a non-performer can get to being a living part of the music.
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