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Act One
Dr Needlemeier, a world-renowned plastic surgeon, runs an ‘aesthetic surgery’ clinic in the Swiss mountains. His motto is ‘putting right what nature got wrong’. The clinic’s receptionist is Donna, a young woman with a badly scarred face – the result of an accident with a snow-boarder. Robert, a young man from the local village, arrives with packages. He is engaged to Elsa, Needlemeier’s daughter, but she will only marry him if he agrees to go under her father's scalpel to perfect his looks. Dr Needlemeier is married to Lania, a beautiful woman who retains her youthful looks regular annual surgical intervention from her husband. But Needlemeier has been having and affair with Donna, and has plans to beautify her face and replace Lania with her.
Robert is taken off to the operating theatre, where Needlemeier beautifies his physique, including adding a couple of inches to his 'manhood'. Elsa inspects the results before he comes round and is pleased with her father's work.
Needlemeier and Donna are anticipating the imminent arrival of a new patient, the world-famous actor Luke Pollock. Needlemeier has been collecting waste body parts from the rich and famous and reducing them in a large vat in which he is brewing an elixir of life. But the clinic's security has been breached by Susannah Dangerfield, a reporter from Global Glamour TV, who has heard rumours of the arrival of a mystery celebrity and has disguised herself as a member of staff.
Robert comes round from his surgery, but he is so taken with his new body that he completely ignores Elsa and promptly falls in love with his own reflection. Meanwhile Lania has gone under Needlemeier's knife for her latest procedure.
Act Two
All of Needlemeier's patients gather for a party to celebrate his work. They each stand up and take a bow as before and after photographs of their procedures are displayed on a screen. Whilst Needlemeier is receiving their plaudits, a distraught Elsa decides that, if Robert is in love with himself then she will have surgery to make herself look just like him.
Donna informs Needlemeier that Pollock's entourage has arrived at the clinic in a fleet of limousines. There is no sign of the actor yet but he cannot be far since he is never more than seven minutes away from his hair consultant. But then Pollock himself steps forward, revealing that he actually arrived at the clinic incognito earlier in the day. Needlemeier welcomes him and, in return for a large cheque, hands him a dose of his elixir - which Donna has substituted with a potent sleeping draught.
Needlemeier has other plans for Pollock, intending to take from him the vital ingredient to perfect his elixir - a single testicle from the world's most charismatic man. Needlemeier then injects Donna with an anaesthetic and she and Pollock are wheeled off to the operating theatre. Pollock's testicle is removed and Donna's scarred face is peeled away and replaced with Lania's (which Needlemeier took in the earlier operation).
Later, Lania returns from surgery. When the bandages are removed it is clear that her face has now been replaced by Donna's. Donna returns from surgery and Lania, who has not yet seen her own reflection, is confused that Donna now looks exactly like her. Pollock also returns, furious and horrified at what has been taken from him. When Lania catches sight of her reflection in a mirror she screams in horror, starting an avalanche. Needlemeier and Donna then drink a dose of the completed elixir and ski off together with the others in pursuit.
Act Three
Some years later, Needlemeier, has set up a new clinic in California, offering eternal youth to those rich enough to afford his elixir. His patients never want to leave, and the clinic has become a residential community in which all the residents look like a young Donna or Robert. Susannah Dangerfield comes, still in search of a story, and runs into Pollock who promises to marry anyone who can return his lost testicle to him.
Elsa (looking like Robert) and Lania (looking like the disfigured Donna) arrive and at first don't recognise each other, but then they embrace and Donna learns that her mother has spent the intervening years learning the skills of plastic surgery.
Meanwhile, Needlemeier's elixir is running out and he selects two Donna look-alikes from the crowd. He pushes one of them into the vat, keeping the other (who is in fact the real Donna) for later. Needlemeier then selects three Roberts for the vat, one of which, again, is the real Robert (who has now begun to pine for Elsa). As Needlemeier is making his choice Elsa arrives and, hearing Robert's voice intercedes to save him. Lania also intervenes and attempts to stab Needlemeier but is disarmed.
Both Lania and the Donna selected earlier are candidates for the vat. Needlemeier pushes Donna into the vat, realising too late that it was the real Donna. Lania takes advantage of his distress and pushes him in after her.
The patients then drain the elixir, and Susannah finds a small shrivelled object in the dregs - Pollock's is reunited with his testicle and declares his intention to marry her in accordance with his earlier promise. Also revealed in the last dregs of the elixir are Needlemeier and Donna, half absorbed by the soup into which they slowly melt away. Lania tells Robert and Elsa that she will not use her newly acquired surgical skills to restore their original appearances so they agree to love each other as they are.
The first thing that strikes you about this new production is the music - striking it certainly is, but unfortunately not in a good way. For a production that calls itself an operetta one would expect music that was tuneful and light-hearted, lilting and exuberant, but in David Sawer's score anyone with such expectations would be sorely disappointed. The music is joyless, dour, characterised by broken chords and long pauses. There is little in there to lift the heart, and even less that one can even recall at the end of the performance. True, the choral work in one or two places breaks the mould and is actually quite beautiful, but overall Sawer's score pays Armando Iannuci's otherwise quite likeable libretto miserably few favours. I do not question Sawer's talent, only his concept, and, if it is not too cliche'd to say so, suggest there is much to be learned about writing music for this type of production from a quick perusal of the work of the late, great Arthur Sullivan.
The libretto on the other hand is actually much better, it is witty and incisive and with music to match would have been very good indeed. The story also is well planned, if a little cockeyed (but that is as one would expect in an operetta). It is rich in comic opportunities and flows along at a smooth pace with some excellent action sequences. Particularly intriguing were the operation sequences on remarkably lifelike dummies, and the scene towards the end in which all the residents of the clinic tore off their clothing and cavorted about naked (actually wearing 'naked body' suits).
The story is, in essence, a satire on the modern obsession with plastic surgery and the power of the dollar to buy the body beautiful. Needlemeier, ably sung by Geoffrey Dalton, is the hero-come-arch-villain of the piece. A kind of mad professor who panders to the whims of the rich and famous but all the while is preying upon them to further his own ambitions. Janis Kelly and Heather Shipp as Needlemeier's wife, Lania, and his lover, Donna, both sing and act their parts beautifully whilst the incredibly tall Gwendoline Christie towers over them and injects some much needed vibrance into the production with a first class American accent. All of the main characters are strongly defined and interesting, and the large chorus of Opera North fills the stage in the crowd scenes.
Potentially, this could have been so much better. On the night it played to a house that was more than half-empty at the start and became a little emptier during the curtain fall between the first and second acts. I cannot remember when I last saw an appreciable number of people vote with their feet and leave a production so early! Personally, whilst not what I had expected I did not think even at that point that it was so bad as to contemplate leaving, and in fact it improved in the second act which was stronger musically than the first. But in the final analysis, only a radical rethink on the music could rescue this piece from the anonymity to which it appears destined.
Well sung and acted with an interesting storyline and likeable libretto let down by a drab and unexciting musical score. Fails to deliver what it says on the tin.