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Queen's Hall, Edinburgh
Duncan is king of a troop of baboons. A female baboon (Lady Macbeth) convinces the rival alpha male (Macbeth) to do him in and take top spot, which rocks the hierarchy of the troop. A baboon chorus hoots and croons reactions en masse, and the proceedings are mulled over by three conspiring primatologists, who conclude that the animal kingdom isn't so unlike ours after all.
So far, so comfortably quirky. The Okavango Macbeth is the brainchild of Alexander McCall Smith, who spent time in Botswana's Okavango Delta and saw "Lady Macbeth traits" in the baboons' matriarchal society. He returned to Edinburgh and wrote the libretto, and it is certainly his name rather than Tom Cunningham's music that sells this pretty flimsy opera.
The 2009 premiere must have been something, held in a converted garage in Botswana – called, of course, the No 1 Ladies' Opera House – with local singers and an audience of 58. But at the Queen's Hall, that novelty quickly wore off and was replaced by a mental game of name-that-tune as one derivative number followed another. McCall Smith's words work well in song, but the pallid bossa novas and Lloyd Webberish ballads make for a wince-inducing score. The band – strings, percussion, piano, horn and cheesy whistle lines to rival Stevie Wonder's harmonica – was provided by Mr McFall's Chamber, a fine Edinburgh institution, conducted by Michael Bawtree.
Nicholas Ellenbogen's direction had the members of Edinburgh Studio Opera walking stooped and picking at each others' hair, with face paint and masks to reinforce the baboonishness. With some shaky solos and overdone ensemble singing, the whole thing felt like enthusiastic am-dram, not the glossy programmed PR stunt it was.
