Least Like the Other review: This opera about JFK’s hidden sister is swamped by visual effects

Bill Irvine and Netia Jones's new opera treats its performers like ciphers instead of characters. 

Black Box Theatre, Galway International Arts Festival

★ ★

Next to the Sacred Heart, nothing sat as securely on the walls of Ireland’s households - or in its people’s patriotism - as John F. Kennedy. 

There he is, a depiction of youth and glory, descending from Irish emigrants and ascendant to the White House. Surrounded in a frame and put on display, you’d swear he was one of our own. 

If the Kennedys are the closest thing to an Irish royal family, then Brian Irvine and Netia Jones’s new opera is a bold statement. Based on the life of JFK’s sister Rosemary, a woman born with intellectual disabilities and hidden from public attention, it exposes a dark secret at the heart of the Kennedy clan. 

By turning to Jones, a long-working British director and video design whiz, Irish National Opera stand to present their most contemporary production yet. Rosemary (Naomi Louisa O’Connell) occupies a stage as sterile as a doctor’s office, while extracts from her mother Rose Kennedy (read aloud by assistant director Aoife Spillane-Hinks, pulling overtime) insist on a close-knit and supportive family.

“Isn’t the Bougainville beautiful at this time of year?” sings Rosemary, making polite chat while Brian Irvine’s music, delivered by the superb Irish National Orchestra players, spirals into disharmony. There is a sense of menace barely suppressed under everyday life. 

Assembled from biographical writings, letters, speeches and interviews, the story portrays Rosemary as a devoted child, eager to please. If jittery rhythms don’t already unsettle, then the freezing of the cast during one of Rose Kennedy’s demanding quizzes, allowing us to take in their fear-filled expressions, certainly does. 

Weaving a history of mid-century psychosurgery, and bringing the advocates of lobotomy operations to life, Irvine and Jones seem interested in making a horror opera. But their endeavour lacks the focus to frighten, as Jones's direction becomes restless. During one of Rosemary’s endless intelligence tests, Louisa O’Connell will stirringly unravel one second, and then be thrusted a microphone to blow out another question. She plays both the tormented and the tormenter. 

That two actors - Stephanie Dufresene and Ronan Leahy - are dressed like investigators, and at hand to play multiple roles, suggests that the production treats its performers more like ciphers than characters.

It’s sad to see the only presentation available for the opera’s impressive research to be the video projection of documentary fragments, the same text spoken aloud by the cast. It creates the head-banging effect of several devices that, despite their detail, still say the same thing.

Not unlike Tom Cairn’s The Glass Menagerie, Jones’s production puts too much design onstage, swamping scenes with visual effects. Calming footage of a swimming pool, seen against a rare piano melody, is the only refreshment. 

Run ended.