Anna Nicole (TV)

Anna Nicole is a new opera, created by Mark Anthony-Turnage and Richard Thomas, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in February this year, and was broadcast on BBC4 the a couple of evenings ago [I caught it on iPlayer]. It follows the life of the former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, famous for marrying an 89 year old man and dying of a drugs overdose at the age of 39.

This production follows Anna Nicole (Eva-Maria Westbroek) as she goes from young wife & mother in Mexica, to single mum & pole dancer in Houston, to wife of elderly oil magnate J Howard Marshall II (Alan Oke) and finally to a falling apart addict, reliant on the support of lawyer Howard Stern (Gerald Finley).

As a disclaimer, I know very little, close to nothing about opera really. To me, however, Anna Nicole was reminiscent of a mix of operetta and musical, so it was not alienating. Although this could perhaps be down to the fact that the opera is entirely in English...with English subtitles, which were occasionally useful when the accents of the leads (notably Westbroek) could make the words unclear.

I actually quite liked Anna Nicole. The use of the omniscient chorus of the press was a clever (who disappear at the beginning of Act 2, then turn up again at the end of it) idea of showing the constant media attention on Smith. Although I will admit to feeling sorry for the dancers who had to spend the entire show with cameras on their heads. The opera doesn't go really deeply into any of the events, which could cause problems if you wish to know more about Smith's life, as opposed to just being a general comment on celebrity. However, there are some really clever moments, such as the 'Gentleman's Club' scene, the fit over Marshall's inheritance and the rather dark scene depicting Stern's managing of Anna Nicole's life in order to gain her more publicity. In addition to not knowing much about opera, I also don't know very much about Anna Nicole Smith, apart from the very end bit of her life; so I can't really comment on how well the piece explored it. What was quite interesting was the fact that they didn't offer one definitive way that things happened; they'd present Stern or Anna's version of events and counteract it with Marshall's family's views or Anna's mother, Virgie's (Susan Bickley) beliefs.

The performances were all good. As the title role, Eva-Marie Westbroek was very good, bringing an edge of innocence and desparation to the role, even if occasionally her accent diverged from the Southern voice, that is actually made much of as part of the text. As ring-master Stern, Gerald Finley was very good, being both charming and slightly scary (the real-life Stern is apparently very unhappy with this portrayal). To be honest, my next favourite performance came from the entire Opera House Chorus; who brought real life to all the ensemble characters. But, from the named players, Bickley brought a sense of pain to Virgie, Nicole Smith's much maligned wife and Alan Oke was fine as the elderly man totally in love with Smith.

Whilst occassionally some of the jokes in the piece were rammed home through far too much reptetition, and some of the language seemed crude just for the hell of it; Anna Nicole was a perfectly fine piece of theatre (again, I don't feel happy commenting on it in the opera cannon as I know so little about it) with good stage craft and performances; although it didn't quite live up to its hype.