ENO's Angel's Bone Review: a cinematic exposé of human trafficking
17 October 2026 | 18:00 | London Coliseum
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | PR - Invite
You may not recognise Kip Williams by name, though you may more than recognise his previous directorial credits, having led Cynthia Erivo in Dracula and Olivier Award-winner Sarah Snook in The Picture Of Dorian Gray. Famous for his cinematic and immersive video style, Williams directs a colossal staging of Angel's Bone, an English National Opera production originally commissioned for Manchester's Aviva Studios earlier this year.
Composed by Du Yun, with a libretto from Royce Vavrek, this is evidently different from your traditional ENO experience, combining punk rock, opera, chamber music and spoken drama. First penned in 2016, and going on to win the Pulitzer Prize the following year, this is opera that speaks to our world today: immediate and provocative.
Two unnamed, bruised and battered angels begin onstage, as the curtain rises fifteen minutes before the advertised start time. They have fallen into the garden of Mr and Mrs X.E., who take them in under the pretence of nursing them to health. That is until impulsive forces push the couple into the dangerous world of human trafficking, clipping the angels' wings and claiming them as their own.
Matthew McKinney and Mariam Wallentin lead tremendously vulnerable performances as these abused angels. McKinney's acted ability is impressive, whose expressions are painfully believable given the magnified intimacy of Ash J Woodward's live camera footage.
And through the angels is where Vavrek's libretto really excels. When humans surround them, lyrics often overlap and intermix with one another. Despite being sung in English (with English surtitles above), the language becomes obscured and foreign, as we share in the overwhelm that the angels experience.
The interesting thing about Angel's Bone is that it focuses less on the victims, and more on the perpetrators. When people are given the chance to exploit fellow human beings when no-one is looking, you never know the lengths to which they may go.
Mrs X.E. is the main orchestrator of the couple, who seeks a desperate release from her modest middle-class marriage, and later seeks to gain celebrity status from her false victimhood as the 'wife of a trafficker'. Allison Cook is despicably unlikeable in the role (in the mightiest of performances!), and even gives room to a smidgen of sympathy in Mrs X.E. to prevent a singular villain. As the show's lead soprano, Cook's pitch often increases when she protests her faults to give the impression of a saviour, in the belief that her behaviour is holy.
Rodney Earl Clarke gives an understated performance as Mr X.E., who often repeats quite a limited selection of lines while under the influence of Mrs X.E.. Except when he defies his wife's actions in the aria Mercy, his vocabulary expands, with Earl Clarke delivering real command alongside a percussive Kantos Chamber Choir, who support the evening as a striking ensemble of characters.
The signature style of Kip Williams really combats our willingness to look away from these social issues, with multiple up-close, high definition video screens that span the width of the London Coliseum stage (which is big!). The ability to split-screen proves a great advantage in the party scene, where the elite celebrate on one half, and the angels are sexually assaulted in front of the camera on the other. All while Marg Horwell's deconstructed suburban home design rotates in varying paces.
It is exhausting for the senses, but this reflects a lot on the experience for the angels themselves. And it's never too much to handle, all the elements falling into place quite flawlessly. I don't think I have been this engrossed in a piece of theatre for such a long time.
As we read in Aviva Attias' programme note, Greater Manchester Police report that cases of modern slavery have increased six-fold over the past ten years, as well as the growing concern for children's sexual exploitation on social media. Humans are becoming an increasing commodity in underworld systems, and Angel's Bone seeks to equip the public on this through the metaphor of an angel's purity. Du Yun's non-conventional, thrilling and filmic compositions (conducted by Baldur Brönnimann) are enough to convert anyone to this genre of contemporary opera.
Playing at the London Coliseum until 31st October: https://londoncoliseum.org/events/angels-bone/
[Sung in English with English surtitles, 18+]
