Opera: Dead Wedding, Library Theatre, Manchester

Reinventing the Orpheus myth for the 400th anniversary of the first opera, Monteverdi's Orfeo, is all very well. But the creators of this Manchester Festival commission could have shed a little more light on exactly what was going on here, in the Underworld. Dead Wedding, by the puppet company Faulty Optic and Opera North, fleshes out the imaginary next chapter of Orpheus and Eurydice's story.

Mira Calix's score, a web of electronic noises – groans, grinding and whooping, wobbly vocalising – adds greatly to the weird visuals. The viola matches the macabre hues of the story; a cello complements Orpheus's musical activities; and ghostly clarinets squawk and croon, while Calix herself oversees the little band.

There's more to Faulty Optic than puppetry. Its dislocated Land of the Dead is brought to life with animated film and every type of non-verbal drama you can think of. A surreal landscape is dominated by skeletal puppets, eerily white under fluorescent lighting, seamlessly operated by shadowy figures. The set could have been created from a model kit with girders, wheels, axles and gears. It gives few clues as to time or place except for a gravestone and a sign saying "Hades – Danger of Death".

The narrative is constantly engaging. Stiffs in coffins pay Charon to allow them to cross the Styx in a whizzing lift. Orpheus appears to be dug up from his grave, possibly pulled to bits by the Bacchae, and finds himself minus his legs. A puppet on stilts staggers and sways to the door of the Underworld. There, Eurydice – a needle-nosed skull with beady eyes – is preparing herself for the Elysium fields, scrubbing away at her soul, a flimsy gauze outer skin.

There is an amusing re-marriage between Orpheus and Eurydice: puppets in tea-cosy masks, clutching outsized champagne glasses and practising flash photography is funnier than it sounds. But distant memories haunt the pair, and the lovers' hopes of bliss in Eternity are shattered. A pair of tiny figures atop a wedding cake are savaged by a vulture and an ogre-like monster, and even as the green light eventually signals "Go", it seems as though Elysium may not be the paradise once promised.

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