Cavalleria Rusticana / Pagliacci, Coliseum, London

Just when you'd thought that this marriage of convenience was finally citing irreconcilable differences along comes Richard Jones to inflame the passions of the union.

And because Jones loves subverting our expectations he tricks us into giving the cast of Cavalleria rusticana a second round of applause at the start of Pagliacci as if to say - I've really no idea why these operas are performed together but let's at least contrive a link. It's theatre - you can do anything you like.

And he does. Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana ("Sicilian Revenge" in the new Sean O'Brien translation) is, of course, the dark horse of the two and if the term Verismo in opera really does mean "realism" and "truth" then Jones' unflinching directness is long overdue. We are in Sicily, or so we are told (and so the clothes tell us), but inside the grubby, tin-roofed, community centre the sun never shines and one person's business is everyone's business. As closed communities go, this one is stifling, barely room to breathe. Jones even invents a local simpleton to be all-seeing, all-knowing.

Outside, meanwhile, it's Easter Sunday and the sense of high church/ low morality could hardly be more explicit. During the highly-charged prelude Jones doesn't leave Turridu's affair with Lola to the imagination and his offstage serenade at the opening of the opera is sung directly to her. Peter Auty - in a real rachetting up of his virile tenor into bravura territory - does not spare the ardour and nor does Edward Gardner whose conducting is ripe and robust and then some.

But at the centre of it all is Turrido's love-on-the-rebound, the wronged woman, Santuzza, and Jones turns her into an embittered witch-like outsider, robbed of her honour and her self-respect. And hell hath no fury like Jane Dutton who wields her huge, somewhat unyielding, voice like a Sicilian curse. That curse is converted into bloody retribution in full view of the audience (no offstage revenge killing here) and Jones being Jones the opening of the opera is poetically mirrored at the end as Turrido falls bleeding into Lola's arms. So simple, so lethal.

Comedy can be lethal, too - and there's nowt more lethal than a cuckolded clown. In Lee Hall's new English adaptation Leoncavallo's Pagliacci is now The Comedians and in the spirit of the original Hall and Jones have cleverly supplanted one outmoded brand of comedy - Commedia dell'Arte - with another. A bunch of tired northern comics enjoying a belated renaissance on TV - "The stars of ITV's Bless My Soul" - are on the road with a terrible farce Ding Dong. The consequences are a little like Quentin Tarrantino going to work on Ricky Gervais' Extras ("Are you 'avin' a laff?"). "Please see me as human", pleads Christopher Purves' Tony, his bright blue suit and silly horn-rimmed glasses making that a somewhat optimistic prospect. Kenny "Mr. Paxo" Evans (Geraint Dodd) has credibility issues, too. It's inevitable that he will end up well and truly stuffed. So when he begins his tragic aria "On with the make-up" and Jones (and his designer Ultz) reveals him and the other protagonists isolated in their tiny dressing rooms, it's like we are pulling focus on the whole history of sad, lonely, clowns.

Indeed, part of the brilliance of this show is the very real sense of its characters' back-stories. It may not be as well sung as you might wish - though Mary Plazas is more than equal to the not inconsiderable demands of Nedda, now Nelly (the names have been changed to protect the innocent) - but the spirit is infinitely willing.

In a stroke of genius Jones allows us to see the climactic bedroom farce and the audience's reactions in adjacent frames, as it were. As things get really heated, kids and elderly relatives are swiftly spirited to the nearest exit. For once, the pay-off line - "The comedy is over" - is no laughing matter.

To hear Edward Seckerson interview the writer and director, click here.

To 23 October (0871 911 0200) -

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