Up the revolution

Spoiler alert: the final image of John Fulljames’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses at the Roundhouse is haunting. Ulysses (Roderick Williams) and Penelope (Christine Rice) stand facing each other at last, arms outstretched. But Penelope is on terra firma. Ulysses stands on the revolving walkway that has served as the stage throughout most of the evening. And though Monteverdi’s music has found stillness, the stage continues to revolve, carrying him away from his beloved — boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Or something. Like many of this production’s most striking ideas, it’s poetic in the moment, but doesn’t really work once you step back. A metaphor for the alienating effect of war and exile? That might explain why Telemachus is huddled nearby, apparently shell-shocked. But throughout the show, in Samuel Boden’s brightly sung performance, he’s been the embodiment of sunny assurance, striding about bare-chested in a blond wig as he gives his mother far too much information about Helen of Troy. A community chorus sings with vigour, dressed in headscarves and blankets. Fulljames suggests that they’re refugees, and Penelope and Melantho (Francesca Chiejina) distribute water to huddled masses who moments later are cheerfully dancing with the rapacious suitors. Talk about mixed messages. And of course, there’s that final image of estrangement, when everything in the music and the plot pulls towards blissful reunion.

But it’s handsomely done, and the Royal Opera has given careful thought to the basically insurmountable problems of opera in the round. As the outer walkway revolves, so the orchestra, placed centrally, turns slowly in the opposite direction. Nods to the venue’s circus heritage — balloons representing Eumaeus’s sheep burst with a comical bleat, and Minerva (Catherine Carby) and Telemachus whizz round on a tandem — nicely pointed up the moments of humour in Monteverdi’s light-footed, endlessly shifting emotional continuum.