Self-inflicted tragedy? Zach Borichevsky as Rodolfo and Corinne Winters as Mimi in La Bohème. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

La Bohème review – these bohemians are off their heads

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Coliseum, London
A druggy, contemporary setting for Puccini’s tragic opera muddles matters, but there is terrific acting and singing

Benedict Andrews ’s English National Opera staging of Puccini’s La Bohème is a co-production with Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, where it was first seen last year. Though it has apparently been reworked for its London transfer, it remains an awkward effort, sometimes powerful, but at others, oddly confused.

Andrews relocates the opera from 1830s Paris to an unspecified big city, somewhere in Europe or the US, in the 1990s. The Bohemians inhabit a run-down loft and, with the exception of Nicholas Masters ’s self-controlled Colline, are off their heads on one substance or another much of the time. Duncan Rock ’s Marcello drinks. Schaunard (Ashley Riches) smokes pot using a makeshift bong. Most importantly, Rodolfo (Zach Borichevsky) and Mimi (Corinne Winters) have been reimagined as heroin addicts who shoot up within minutes of meeting and sing their big love duet in a stoned huddle on the floor.

Addicted … Corinne Winters as Mimi in La Bohème. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Andrews never establishes whether he considers the couple’s tragedy self-inflicted or dependent on the catastrophic arbitrariness of illness, as Puccini intended. Despite the heroin, Mimi’s symptoms remain pulmonary, though references to her cough are accompanied by glances at needle marks on her arms. The final scene, in which she shudders to death in a corner just when Rodolfo has become so self-absorbed as not to notice her, is deeply disturbing, but leaves us with the nagging realisation that we don’t know how she has died.

Winters and Borichevsky are formidable actors, good-looking and terrific to watch. But while she sings with gorgeous tone throughout, Borichevsky sounds effortful, straining in his upper registers, and coming a cropper, on opening night, on a climactic top C – nerves, one hopes. Rock’s Marcello, his rough masculinity hiding deep vulnerability, is outstanding, however: he has a fine, feisty Musetta in Rhian Lois, though Andrews’s fussy treatment of the Café Momus scene threatens to cramp her style.

Masters doesn’t quite capture Colline’s ironic sense of his own self-importance, though Riches’s raunchy, funny Schaunard is one of the best of recent years. Xian Zhang conducts a full-on, passionate account of the score, though hampered by too many moments of poor stage/pit co-ordination on the first night. It’s a variable experience, and not nearly as good as Jonathan Miller’s 2009 production, which it replaces.

At Coliseum, London, until 26 November. Box office: 020-7845 9300.