Miss Treat (music Des Oliver words Meredith Oakes) Platform 10 or The Power of Literature (music Julian Grant words Christina Jones) Doggone (music Gary Carpenter words Simon Nicholson) The Nightjar (music Elfyn Jones words Toby Satterthwaite) Seven Tons of Dung (music David Bruce words Bill Bankes-Jones) Glue music by Rachel Leach Hillary Dolamore, Philip Bell, Damian Thantrey Matthew Hunt (clarinet), Lucy Wakeford (harp), Adrian Bradbury (cello) Director Bill Bankes-Jones Musical director Orlando Jopling Tete a Tete This collection of five new "ten-minute" operas, held together by instrumental glue, actually lasted almost two hours, including a twenty minute interval. But separately and in total it was almost a complete delight. All the works were for three singers and clarinet, harp and cello. The set consisted of a cabinet with a row of shorts glasses on top. In the first part there were a large number of music stands with glasses on the cover of the music which formed the set in various ways. In the second part (the final two works) there was one giant music stand which was not used. Miss Treat was the least successful piece, but it was probably wise to start with it. An irritating exchange between a woman and the two men she has been seeing ends with her dumping both. This was spoken by the instrumentalists rather than the singers, to a recorded accompaniment that reproduced the rhythms and tones of the speech on the strikingly voice-like instruments. Lucy Wakeford has, or imitated, a quite horrific speaking voice. The main payoff from this one was an amusing replay in the much more interesting final work, Seven Tons of Dung. Platform 10 was a brief encounter between a latter-day Anna Karenina and a pair of trainspotters who know about Tolstoy because he died at a railway station. Lisa, the Anna figure, is saved from suicide by a coup de foudre with Nigel, the single trainspotter. (Gerald, the married one, was late for the trains because his wife demanded sex as he was leaving.) The train was ingeniously constructed by opening the music on the stands. The music was mainstream music theatre, consisting of brief song fragments with amusing lyrics. The performances were also amusing. The main flaw was that as Nigel Damian Thantrey sang beautifully enough to undercut his nerdy appeareance. Perhaps his music always had a hint of a romantic lead to it. Doggone was based on a heart-breaking episode in the first world war. The government appealed for dogs to work for the army, and people who had already lost sons or brothers proceded to send their dogs to war in the hope of doing something to end it. In a sort of canine Oh what a lovely war, with jingoistic and sentimental melodies, a woman who has lost her brother and fiancee brings Toby (the HMV dog on music on a music stand), and he is sent on bomb clearance duty. A recorded march made up of accumulated doggy noises as the "volunteer" dogs join up is surprisingly affecting. The Nightjar, based on a story by Ray Bradbury, involves a man who wishes so hard for his missing son to come home that the son returns even though he is dead, not as a ghost but as a horribly decomposed body. Neither parent can cope, though his mother at least is partly relieved by the closure when he leaves again. This was by far the most intense of the works, and also the least clear, perhaps because the action has no external themes or images to reflect the characters' inner experience. In such a short work, there is no space to build up emotional effects in the music -- you need some kind of shorthand, which was missing here. Seven Tons of Dung involves a dung beetle (in a wheelie bin smeared with chocolate spread), a spider (with two pairs of waders and a nasty web stuck with winged Barbie dolls and Action Men) and a caterpillar (in a sleeping bag). The caterpillar fancies the spider, is fancied by the dung beetle until she metamorphoses and becomes too unsquirmy, and ends up on the spider's web being eaten. The lads and Essex girl trio of Miss Treat works much better in this surreal form, though the rich array of jokes tended to obscure any impact from the music, which came over as easy listening though David Bruce studied with Birtwhistle. One funny joke was the dung beetle waking up from a horrible dream that he had been transformed into a squeaky-clean human.