I’ll admit it: I’m a Reich Virgin. Or at least, I was until this evening. I realise that the last thing all you Reich-worshippers out there want is a jumped-up and misinformed reviewer stamping all over your favourite piece of video opera, so please bear with me. For all you others, a little explanation might be required before you approach this bewildering but enchanting production. Three Tales is a video-opera in three acts, featuring music by Steve Reich and visuals by Beryl Korot. It is a piece written in response to modern technology from the past 100 years, using three specific examples: Act 1 concerns the explosion of the Hindenburg zeppelin, Act II the nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll, and Act III the cloned sheep, Dolly. Essentially, it’s a pretty angsty blend of music and video that gets quite cross about busy-body humans wrecking life, the universe and everything. Reich pioneered the style of minimalist music, which, if you haven’t heard it before, can take some getting used to. The programme for this production, which at fourteen pages long is the heftiest I've ever held at the ADC, explains that the irony of Reich and Korot’s collaboration is that, despite their complaints about the exploitation of technology, this piece relies on exactly that. The music is repetitive and frequently discordant, and rises and falls according to the ominous sounds of ticking on the screen behind it, or the manipulated voices of scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Cynthia Breazeal.

To pull off this intriguing piece of theatre, you need one hell of an ensemble and some genius techies. It was a huge shame that the film got out of sync with the sound in the final tale of Dolly the Sheep. Not only was I looking forward to this section the most, but it came after nearly forty minutes of brilliantly timed action. To lose the audience on a first-night technical glitch - at such a point - was tragic. The lighting was also slightly off at times, with the singers being launched into the spotlight a couple of seconds after they had actually started singing: this was a pity, as they often had only three or four notes of “I couldn’t understand it” or “Cyborgs/Robots” to sing, anyway. That said, Ensemble BPM and the singers sounded incredible: the opening and the ‘building’ section of Act I were particularly stunning. Their boiler-suit-clad puppet-master made for a spectacular silhouette against the backdrop of Korot’s footage: Nick Sutcliffe’s unfailing slickness stretched even to the flourishing click of his laptop keyboard between pieces. Unfortunately, his fluency was somewhat deflated by the clumsier movements of the singers as they paced up and down the stage, navigating the orchestra and making some bewildering entrances and exits throughout. The girls, in particular, looked really rather bored with proceedings when they weren’t singing.

Some of the extras, such as the increasingly cluttered set, ‘costumes’ and mini dance routines, were either misguided attempts to distract from the weird musical moments, or designed to increase the bizarre nature of the piece. Either way, they weren’t necessary, as Reich’s creation easily speaks for itself: it’s quite an experience, and worth a try if simply to witness a remarkable musical performance.