Opera review: Cunning Little Vixen provides a lot of enjoyment in Tralee 

Irish National Opera’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen is also touring to Cork, Limerick, and other centres 

Amber Norelai (Sharp Ears) and Jade Phoenix (Goldspur The Fox) in Irish National Opera's production of The Cunning Little Vixen. Picture: Ruth Medjber 

 The Cunning Little Vixen, Siamsa Tíre, Tralee 

★★★★☆

 With its animated projections, and colourful, anthropomorphic costumes, the Irish National Opera’s touring production of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen could seem perfectly child-friendly. It’s even sung in English here. And perhaps it is, for older children anyway, though with some of the health warnings that might put it in the same camp as, say, Watership Down, that trauma-inducing classic.

For there’s no hiding the cruelty of nature here. The kids might laugh when Sharp Ears, our titular heroine, raises a leg to send a shower of pee over the grumpy grey badger in his sett, but she proves also that, well, foxes are gonna fox.

 So, we should not be surprised when her lecture on socialist feminism, aimed at the hens against their strutting, domineering cockerel, ends not with a Chicken Run-like liberation, but with Sharp Ears killing the lot of them. Little consolation to the brood, no doubt, but refreshing all the same to hear in an opera the line, “Why should we need men at all?”

 Ah yes. This vixen is not just red of coat, and politics, but in tooth and claw too. The same balance of cuteness and bite marks the design elements here, with costumes by Saileog O’Halloran, lighting by Sarah Jane Sheils, projections by Neil O’Driscoll, and set by Maree Kearns combining to create a storybook feeling, or perhaps one of a sophisticated animation, a la Wolfwalkers, from Kilkenny’s Cartoon Saloon.

As well as foxes and hens, we have a woods teeming with life: a frog, a badger, an owl, a caterpillar, a cricket, a woodpecker, and a mosquito with his proboscis in a hip flask, not to mention to farm dog who you suspect would love a walk on the wild side.

Marshalling it all is director Sophie Motley, who creates a convincing world from the disparate elements, or rather, two worlds, as the drama stems from where the human and animal realms clash. We meet the Forester early, as he captures Sharp Ears, thus setting in train the plot of fairy-tale simplicity and resonance. The vixen escapes, falls in love, has cubs of her own: it’s a cycle of life and death, with a natural inevitability. By contrast, the humans air their complicated woes over booze, Chekhovian characters in their various types of lovelorn unhappiness, or wedded misery.

Ceola Roy (Little Sharp Ears) and Benjamin Russell (Forester) in The Cunning Little Vixen.

Musically, the production is a joy. The score is strongest in creating tones and moods, rather than melodies, but there is a lightness and bounce here, in a nimble orchestration for a relatively small touring group, under the baton of Charlotte Corderoy.

Certain lines and moments fall a little flat in the English translation, but there’s no want of clarity. Amber Norelai stars as Sharp Ears. Her scenes with fellow soprano Jade Phoenix as the Fox are among the most rewarding. (If the Lady and the Tramp had their lips-meeting moment from either end of a piece of spaghetti, for these two, it’s more likely to be some rabbit entrails.)

 Meanwhile, Benjamin Russell’s acting and singing chops combine to make a compelling Forester, while James Platt’s bass is resounding as the Badger, the Priest, and the Poacher.

• Tour dates: Thurs, Feb 5: Everyman, Cork; Feb 7: Lime Tree, Limerick; Feb 10: Town Hall, Galway; Feb 12: Hawk's Well, Sligo; Feb 14: An Grianán, Letterkenny; Feb 17: Solstice Arts Centre, Navan; Feb 19-22: Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire.