Tortured by amateurism In The Penal Colony

In Kafka’s short story a man is condemned to be executed by a machine of such exquisite, barbaric cruelty as to beggar the imagination. A harrow studded with needles will inscribe the law supposedly infringed into the skin on his back — a process that will take 12 hours. The Officer believes such a punishment offers the condemned man a redemption of some sort.

The machine malfunctions, however, and the Officer submits his own body to take the place of the condemned man. It’s Kafka at his most chilling, imbuing the psychotic behaviour of an unaccountable dystopic regime with a perverse sense of mysticism.

What a shame that the composer who elected to set it had to be Philip Glass. His score for string quintet, a characteristic roll of sonic wallpaper, rarely straying beyond simple common chords, chugs along amiably, even in passages describing horrific torture.

The sense of the text is rendered neither in the vocal line (well enough delivered by Omar Ebrahim and Michael Bennett) nor by harmonic or rhythmic tension.

Stupefying in its banality, Glass’s stop-start score is both arbitrary and amateurish.

Nor, if there is any redemption to be found here, is it through Michael Rafferty’s conducting or Michael McCarthy’s minimal production.

Rarely has an opera been more aptly named.

Until Saturday; 020 7304 4000, roh.org.uk

Music Theatre Wales: In The Penal Colony
Linbury Studio Theatre At Royal Opera House
Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 9DD