The Alonetimes, a new music theatre work by composers Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables, opened in its UK premiere at Oxford's Schwarzman Centre. Six performers navigate a fragmented world of online slang, loneliness and absurdity across the work.
The production abandons conventional opera structure. Instead of linear plot, the cast members shift between unnamed roles, play instruments, sing, form a chorus and perform as soloists. The programme describes it as "a fragmented archaeology of personal stories".
The stage design mixed surreal imagery with contemporary culture. A performer wore a string of vapes as a necklace and produced close-miked mouth noises while sitting in white fabric and smoke. Percussion hisses and rattles rose beneath this scene, punctuated by dancing flashlights, reverb and drum rolls. Monologues ranged from quiet, sinister delivery to rapid manic rap, while comically dysfunctional text chats appeared projected on the backcloth.
Choreography blended styles. An angular, tightly controlled trio moved in modern ballet language. A separate section featured traditional hands-on-hips choreography paired with faux-folk lyrics scrolled in gothic script and thick synthetic beats.
Walshe and Venables are established as distinctive creators in music theatre. This marks their first collaboration. The work's aesthetic embraced frenzy and incongruity without settling into recognisable genre conventions. The premiere drew on the Schwarzman Centre's resources to stage material that resists straightforward narrative or musical categorisation, instead layering digital-age references, surrealist imagery and physical performance into a single work.