Claire Seymour, Opera Today - 29/06/2016

The lighting design (Malcolm Rippeth) recreates the multifarious shifts of perspective in Jones’ text - which explores not just Ball’s experience but a collective consciousness - and the hallucinatory worlds into with the poet-dreamer Ball’s mind wanders. Through an oval aperture above the parabolic wooden trench, we peer into a pure azure sky which darkens to indigo. An apricot dawn deepens to blood-crimson, as Ball mounts the ship’s gang-plank and he imagines the fires of hell. As they near the front line, Ball envisions Lieutenant Jenkins as Christ, a shepherd leading his sheep through the wilderness. Rippeth’s disorientating shifts of colour and intensity create a mood that might be termed romantic surrealism, and they are match by Bell’s score...