Castration fears have never seemed so much fun. Shostakovich’s surreal opera “The Nose” tells the story of a high-spirited snout which runs around St Petersburg being chased by its owner. In his creepy, circus-like, laugh-out-loud production, director Barrie Kosky suggests that the owner isn’t really worried about his nose at all.More of that later. The 1930 opera (based on a fantastical little story by Gogol) is full of brilliant snippets of musical pastiche, from hymn-tunes to vaudeville songs, which crunch up against jagged bits of plinky-plonky atonalism. It’s a tricky mix to pull off, but that isn’t the main reason why the piece is hardly ever done. It has 77 named roles and requires some pretty wild vocalism from several members of the cast. So hats off, if for nothing else, to the Royal Opera for assembling a terrific team of singer-actors who throw themselves into Shostakovich’s anarchic and exaggerated world with gusto. And a further doff to conductor Ingo Metzmacher, who finds a way to keep it taut and focused despite the wild switches of tone and mood.But the chief honors go to Barrie Kosky, who creates a dystopian production which is as funny as it is disturbing. He mixes up historical periods with glee, and happily puts 1940s cabaret girls next to 1840s damsels. Sometimes the staging feels like a rip-roaring West End spectacular: there are sequences of glitzy hoofing and tapping from a team of eight male dancers, who often appear in slummy, dirty drag. Sometimes the humor is undercut with anarchic brutality: when the people of St Petersburg decide to lynch the Nose and hang it up on a meat-hook, the effect is as chilling as it is amusing. But things come to a head when the Nose’s owner is symbolically castrated by a mob, and forced to wear a bizarre penis where his nose should be. It’s a brilliant stroke, and makes perfect sense of Shostakovich’s angsty, funny, nightmarish score.Martin Winkler brings phenomenal energy and comic skill to the role of Platon Kuzmitch Kovalov, the Nose’s owner, and delivers a performance of pomposity, vulnerability, and panic. He’s matched by the superb John Tomlinson in a variety of roles (including the barber who may or may not have shaved off Kovalov’s nose). In yet another dazzling coup, the Nose itself is played by a small boy in a huge nose costume. (I saw Ilan Galkoff who was utterly delightful: he shares the role with Harrison Noble.) In the midst of all this terror, primal fear, and gallows humor, lies a touch of youthful innocence.Kosky expresses a fear in the program that English audiences will find his staging too much to handle. He needn’t have worried. It’s a triumph.“The Nose” is at the Royal Opera until November 9www.roh.org.uk
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