The life, or more accurately death, of Walt Disney could’ve done with some help from a mouse and a duck.

English National Opera, London Coliseum, June 27

The art of Walt Disney and the music of Philip Glass might have been a marriage made in heaven. After all, the cartoonist’s craft, like the minimalist’s musical palette, involves hundreds of repetitive gestures strung together to produce tiny, perceptible changes. An obvious synergy there then.

Improbable theatre company co-founder Phelim McDermott’s busy, smart looking world premiere production for Madrid’s Teatro Real and presented here by co-producer English National Opera certainly appreciates that potential. The theatrically slick combination of projected animations and Improbable’s hallmark ‘cardboard and string’ design is all flickering lights and sweeping cinematography. The bustling chorus of singers enhanced by (an occasionally scrappy) ‘skills ensemble’ capture the microcosm of faceless creativity behind the scenes, producing Disney’s painstakingly generated masterpieces. Despite their recently reported financial woes, English National Opera are to be applauded for a level of creativity and imaginative programming that we in Australia can only dream of.

Photo © Javier del Real

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