The Flying Dutchman – The Lowry
I’m afraid this production of The Flying Dutchman, an opera about a man cursed to wander the oceans forever, was itself all-at-sea, lacking direction, and one feared, at times, would sink under the weight of its sadly misguided reimagined central conceit.
It was kept afloat by the excellence of the cast, but the production itself did not seem to know where it was going because the basic idea behind it did not work. In their own words, they “have re-imagined The Flying Dutchman to take place on the ‘ship of state’: the Home Office. Daland is the ‘Home Secretary’ and the Dutchman and his crew become displaced people seeking refuge.”
This analogy just did not work and whilst it was a noble effort to make The Dutchman a man seeking asylum it did not fit with the opera and became confusin...
