Theatre director Robin Norton-Hale transfers her free-ish stage adaptation of Puccini’s opera to film with mostly good results. This version of La Bohème, set in modern east London, uses the camera adeptly to create a sense of intimacy and naturalism that’s very user friendly for viewers not accustomed to opera and its ways. Mind you, any novices will still have to get over the fundamental weirdness of sung-through dialogue, a non-negotiable convention of the format that feels even weirder when the cast is bellowing out the lines in classical fashion while wearing jeans and T-shirts, using slang and cuss words, and mentioning things such as Strictly Ballroom in the English libretto written by Norton-Hale herself (she won an Olivier award for the stage version). Paradoxically, Norton-Hale’s version is both more faithful to Puccini’s original 1890s work and yet seems less dated than Rent, the 1990s stage musical version set among Lower East Side artists in New York.
After some montage meanderings around Broadway market in Hackney, the action settles down in a flat that is less grotty than it might be given how impoverished these guys are meant to be. Would-be novelist Rodolfo (Matthew McKinney) is hanging out with his painter flatmate Marcello (Benson Wilson); soon they are joined by their roistering friends Shaunard (Mark Nathan) and Colline (Edward Jowle) on their way to the pub. Rodolfo, however, stays behind and meets neighbour Mimi (Lucy Hall), here a pretty if markedly frumpy cleaner who makes crochet flowers in her spare time and carries a nasty cough around the way a lady up west may cling to a chihuahua. Later, in the pub, we meet vampish Musetta (Julia Mariko), who catches Marcello’s eye, and the production sets up the live-fast-die-young philosophy and rampant sexual jealousy that are the opera’s key themes.
What’s less effective, arguably, is the portrait of Hackney itself, which looks very sanitary and predominantly white, with a culture that still revolves around the pub like the smoking ban never happened. You can’t help wondering if Rodolfo and Marcello have trust funds that allow them to afford digs in this gentrified neighbourhood, and what exactly is causing Mimi’s cough, which has such consequences for the story.
• La Bohème is in UK cinemas from 3 March.
