Don't get what we want from Varjak Paw

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Instead we get moral uplift, advice on how to make a better world and live a better life. Call me simple if you like but I prefer fart jokes. But then the opera’s target audience is not jaded journalists. This is self-avowedly entertainment for all the family, and the auditorium was duly full of terribly well-behaved children and their parents.

In basing the opera on SF Said’s Varjak Paw stories, Philips and his rhyming librettist, Kit Hesketh-Harvey, have given themselves plenty of character and action to work with. John Fulljames’s production is energetic and visually arresting, and the occasional use of Andrzej Goulding’s cartoon animations is skilfully integrated, to the extent that they threaten to overshadow the live action.

At first it seems that Philips has been so careful to ensure that words get across that his music moves at one single tempo, no matter what the plot demands. As the narrative unfolds, the music, with jazz inflections continually breaking through, eventually catches up. If, in the process, verbal details go missing, the cast ensures that we catch the drift.

As Varjak Paw, the cat who learns the hard way what it takes to survive, Akiya Henry is a bundle of hyperactivity but her thunder is stolen by George Ikediashi, utterly convincing as a villainous cat who eventually sees the light, and by Simon Wilding, who, in a performance of complete canine conviction, plays a dog named Cludge.

Until 28 September. Information: 020 7304 4000.

The Opera Group: Varjak Paw
Linbury Studio Theatre At Royal Opera House
Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 9DD