Graham Vick’s new production of Votzek is a dramatic vision of breathtaking proportions. Encompassing all of life’s insanities, horrors and inhumanities, this was a shattering presentation of a great masterpiece of twentieth-century repertoire.

The staging is wholly unconventional - I attended the performance in Liverpool in a reconditioned aircraft hangar on the site of the old city airport. I must admit, I did find myself wondering if I had come to the right place - after all, Liverpool’s industrial wasteland is a far cry from the kitsch lush of London theatres. Yet somehow, the venue could not have been better picked, for I realise now that the whole evening was a journey away from the familiar and comfortable.

There was no dimming of lights, polite coughing and curtain up. Instead, a burly bass – Keel Watson – bounced us (baseball bat in hand) from our tables and chairs and into the performance arena. No chairs for settling in and snoozing, either. All around were the features and faces of a vigorous and disordered community. A bus stop on one side next to a car crash, a phone box over there, a woman hammering steak on a steel plinth in the middle, a young man neurotically guarding his chair and nurses wheeling comatose patients in hysterical emergency. In short, as convincing and persuasively real a portrait of life’s latent dementias and corruption as I have ever seen. So it was that without hearing or reading that done-to-death “throw away your preconceptions” hogwash, we were all certain to observe the ensuing drama with unaccustomed freshness.

The cast were uniformly excellent. In particular, Tara Harrison as Marie and Andrew Slater as Votzek worked out their harrowing physical and mental breakdown with tremendous conviction; Harrison’s despair from dissolution and Slater’s violence from vulnerability were the formative elements of the evening. Andrew Forbes-Lane and Jonathan Best as Captain and Doctor brought all-round class to their roles with excellent vocal line and sturdy characterisation – Best was wonderfully comic and quite terrifying: his threat of a rectal examination made me more than uncomfortable. Forgotten by his parents but not the audience, Luke Murphy gave a compellingly intelligent performance as Marie’s child. Beyond the main roles there were dozens of extras from local theatre groups and schools. They formed the active and reactive community that gave an overwhelming panoramic emphasis to the central dramatic action. Their joint achievement was utterly remarkable – a triumph of collective talent.

This was of course opera and not theatre, and the show could not have enjoyed its immense success without the fusion of great playing under the baton of Tim Lole. Berg’s Votzek might be uncompromising to many ears, but it can be truly ravishing, sensitive and beautiful and here it was all and more. The rich textures of the orchestral postlude to the drama held the audience in tangible awe. It came as no surprise that they got the greatest ovation of all.

This event was unique in my experience – I have no doubt that this was a production that had the potential to be life-changing to those who participated in it. Don’t worry about your preconceptions of contemporary opera. Whatever they are, you won’t be prepared for this.

Paul Richardson