The Headless Soldier (The Belfast Ensemble & Outburst Arts at Lyric Theatre as part of Outburst Queer Arts Festival until Saturday 11 November) #outburst23

The Belfast Ensemble premiered their first version of Abomination in the Lyric Theatre as part of Outburst Festival five years ago. It was a thrilling bonus, tacked on the end of a restaging of The Doppler Effect.

At this year’s festival, they’re performing The Headless Soldier, an opera in three parts that began when Afghanistan was in the news, and would have played against the continuing news reports from Ukraine if it hadn’t been for Gaza and Israel taking over the top slot for international conflict reporting in bulletins. This post is more of a response than a formal review.

Future students will probably write essays that remark on the opening line: “This is a mixture of raspberries and cranberries.” It’s mundane, and one end of the continuum presented over the next hour and a bit that stretches from home to more traditional war zones. Though home can also be a war zone, which is partly the point. Is there a point of discontinuity between a parent’s aggressive thoughts, words and deeds and the violent thoughts, words and deeds of a soldier or mercenary? Or the repercussions of any number of inequalities, acts of prejudice, bias and discrimination that we experience in life?

Helen (Sarah Richmond) says sings that she is intolerant of caffeine; but that turns out just to be the tip of her iceberg of irritation and hate. Acupuncture. Therapy. She’s tried it all to manage her issues, and perhaps wanted to take matters into her own hands too. The second act properly introduces her husband Thomas (Ed Lyon) and son Zach (Shea McDonnell) and we discover that while personal conflict consumes Helen, Thomas is torn apart by global concerns. Meanwhile young Zach has been drawing pictures of a soldier with no head.

The interval allows the themes to settle. The man off the TV news report visits – there’s a beautiful reveal of Christopher Cull’s character – and disturbs Zach’s reverie in his bedroom. Zach’s torch shines a light; the man’s brightly coloured toy rifle extinguishes what light is left on his battlezone. It’s a dark final act with well-directed movements that are made to look so much more disturbing because there’s a child on stage.

If a mother loses her head over seemingly small things, is she just fighting in a different battleground to those protesting at housing provision, or the soldiers in khaki who are fighting for freedom and democracy? But whose freedom and whose democracy? And maybe what seems like adult behaviour actually starts with us as children railing against what aggravates and annoys Maybe Zach is no more innocent that his parents or the headless soldier? Is it futile to fighting against all this?

There’s a 15-strong orchestra under the stage, a teak platform that provides a number of domestic spaces, a plastic box full of Lego bricks that find their way to the floor, and some harsh blinders from lighting designer Mary Tumelty who switches mood in time with the music. Gavin Peden’s two-layer projections add contemporary context to the universal. Projecting some of the lyrics onto the back wall – made to look like chalk on a blackboard – is effective. Every singer’s diction is excellent, but there’s an extra playfulness and sense of poetry when the words are in vision. And there’s plenty of good acting in this opera.

Theatre allows lines to be drawn between unusual dots. The act of sitting in a seat for an hour or more gives space to recognise yourself in the story, or to question whether what you’re seeing and hearing is universal or just applicable in some situations. The Headless Soldier plays with that freedom to stir up settled thoughts. And it proves that swear words were surely made for opera!

The fact that this work has been co-produced and programmed as part of Outburst festival also raises unspoken questions of how the conflict experienced by queer communities – and not forgetting the conflict between queer communities – fits into the human tendency towards intolerance, fear, misery, war and peace.

With music (and direction) by Conor Mitchell and the libretto by Mark Ravenhill, The Headless Soldier is a provocative operatic triptych. The final performance as part of Outburst Queer Arts Festival is on Saturday 11 November ... assuming the blood can be washed out of the costumes in time!

You can find some other recommendations in my preview of Outburst festival.