Parky At the Pictures (6/3/2026)

(Reviews of La Bohème; and Dolly)

LA BOHÈME.

An English graduate from Hertford College, Oxford and a former Artist in Residence at the Oxford Playhouse, Robin Norton-Hale has made her name as the founder and the Artistic Director of OperaUpClose. She has produced English updates of several operas and makes her directing debut for the screen with an adaptation of the 2009 stage reworking of Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème that earned Norton-Hale an Olivier Award.

As an orchestra gathers Let-It-Be-like on the roof of a London building, the camera alights on some Hackney landmarks, as artist Marcello (Benson Wilson) and aspiring novelist Rodolfo (Matthew McKinney) get so cold in their flat that they have to burn the pages of the latter's new novel to keep warm. Philosopher roommate Colline (Edward Jowle) joins them around the smouldering wastepaper basket, as musician Schaunard (Mark Nathan) wanders in laden down with festive fare for the morrow, as he has just had an unusual payday after being hired by a wealth American to play the guitar to his parrot until it drops off the perch. With the others being too busy gorging themselves to listen, they don't hear that Schaunard conspired with his employer's personal assistant (Jennifer Sims) to poison the bird.

The bantering is interrupted when Benoit the landlord (Pauls Putnins) calls for his rent. He reminds them that they are already a month behind, but accepts a glass of wine and only leaves when Marcello reveals that he had seen the married Benoit canoodling in a wine bar and he scuttles away without his payment after they threaten to snitch to his wife. As it's Christmas Eve, Schaunard suggests they hit the pub and he lends Marcello and Colline a few quid to get them through the night. Rodolfo tells them to go on without him, as he has a thousand words to deliver to a website. But he doesn't write for long, as there's a power cut and he hears Mimi (Lucy Hall) knocking at his door. He invites her in and, noticing her cough, offers her a drink and the use of his coat to warm up.

Bashful, Mimi goes to leave after getting a candle to light her way. But she realises she's lost her room key and Rodolfo offers to help her look for it, even though he's pocketed it so she has to stay and talk. He tells her about his writing aspirations and money matters less than art, while she confides that she likes to make artificial flowers when not cleaning for rich people. Hearing his friends calling from the street, Rodolfo suggests that Mimi comes to the pub. As they're neighbours, he thinks they should get to know each other, but they end up kissing before heading off into the night (with the orchestra wrapped up against the cold on the roof above).

Having bought Mimi a hat from a market stall, Rodolfo introduces her to his pals and they find a table and get a round in. Colline reprimands Schaunard for saying how pretty Mimi is, as she sings about Rodolfo understanding her. However, Marcello's attention has been distracted by the arrival of his old flame, Musetta (Julia Mariko), who has turned up with her sugar daddy, Alcindoro (Nicholas Morris), whom she promptly begins to annoy by drawing attention to herself by dancing on a table. Realisng she's got Marcello's attention, Musetta sits on the bar and demands that Alcindoro does something about her tightly fitting boot and she melts into Marcello's arms the moment her beau has left. With barmaid Jess (Kara Lily Hayworth) watching on in amusement, the friends are relieved when Musetta picks up their tab and charges it to Alcindoro, as they bundle into the street in festive high spirits.

During a musical interlude, we see Rodolfo becoming increasingly anxious about Mimi's health, as she gets tired on walks and leaves bloodstains on the pillowcase from her coughing. When he leaves her and crashes at the pub where Marcello is living rent free while he pains some signs, Mimi seeks out the artist and confides that she is heartbroken, but also confused that Rodolfo has dumped her for flirting with others. He reassures her that he will speak to his friend, although he is also having problems with Musetta, who refuses to be told what to do. Urging Mimi to go home, Marcello talks to Rodolfo when he wakes on the sofa. Rather than tiring of Mimi, he insists he loves her more than ever, but can't afford to pay for her medical bills. So, he has pretended to be jealous in the hope of driving her away so that she can meet someone who can take proper care of her.

Hiding behind the pub, Mimi hears the exchange and she tells Rodolfo that she is leaving him. As they walk in the park, they realise their love is still strong and agree to stay together until the spring. Back at the pub, Marcello hears Musetta flirting with the barman and they have a blazing row that ends with her strutting off, as their parting exchange forms a quartet with the other couple's billing and cooing.

Months pass and Rodolfo and Marcello are trying to work at the flat. They confide to having seen Mimi and Musetta with their new boyfriends and they admit they could never afford to keep them in such luxury. Marcello confesses that every painting he starts winds up being a portrait of Musetta, while Rodolfo curses his laptop for his inability to write. Schaunard and Colline come home with a bag of groceries and they pretend that their meagre fare is a banquet. Colline prevents Schaunard from singing his latest composition and they fool around doing interpretive dances until they engage in a mock duel that descends into a cushion fight.

As they are larking around, Musetta bursts in, as she has found Mimi gasping for breath in the street after having separated from her partner. They lie her on the sofa and she insists she is fine, even though she's freezing and coughing badly. She is pleased to see everyone again and tells Marcello that Musetta is a good woman. He knows and goes with her to sell her earrings in order to buy some medicine. Colline similarly decides to part with his silver cigarette case and Schaunard (who has looked up her symptoms online and called an ambulance) accompanies him, so that Rodolfo and Mimi can be alone. He gives her the hat he had bought on the night they met and she is touched that he remembers every detail of the tryst.

As Mimi falls asleep after a coughing fit that had brought Schaunard rushing in, Marcello and Musetta return with some medicine and a pair of woollen gloves. Mimi is moved by their generosity and settles to sleep with warm hands. Colline returns with some money for Rodolfo. But, as they talk, Schaunard realises that Mimi has died and Rodolfo calls her name, as the sound of a siren can be heard outside.

After Mimi is taken away in an ambulance, Rodolfo stands in a daze in the street. He remains there as darkness falls and the orchestra packs up on the roof. A bell tolls sombrely and the closing shot shows Rodolfo sitting alone under a tree at the cemetery, so he can be close to his beloved.

Somehow, this all manages to be deeply poignant, even though the updating of the scenario makes it seem faintly ridiculous that none one thought to get Mimi to a doctor with a disease that is rarely a killer in 21st-century London. When Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa based their libretto on Henri Murger's Scènes de la vie de bohème, however, tuberculosis was a scourge in the 1840s and even this 1896 opera would have seemed realistic as well as heartbreaking. But Norton-Hale still manages to wring every drop of pathos out of Mimi's death scene. Perhaps she should have a crack at Camille, too?

Purists may bridle at some of the liberties taken with the libretto, but the odd bit of bad language shouldn't offend anybody, especially when Samoan baritone Benson Wilson delivers words like `bullshit' with such relish. He has a magnificent voice, as does soprano Lucy Hall, although it does jar to hear someone so obviously at death's door hitting such high notes with such intensity. Indeed, tenor Matthew McKinney and soprano Julia Mariko also sing beautifully, with the gambit of having the cast perform live to conductor Alice Farnham's pre-recording of Jonathan Dove's orchestration paying off handsomely.

In directing her first film, Norton Hale keeps the focus on the characters in the flat (rather than a garret), which has been tastefully designed by Hannah McCulley to look suitably bohemian without being a slacker hellhole. Jack Edwards's camera is given a little more licence during the pub scene (with its regrettably undiversified clientele), while his pillow shots of the Hackney gentrified landmarks are deftly assembled by editor Sylvie Landra. There are a few cosmetic changes, with the toy seller becoming a vape peddler, the parrot scene being enacted rather than recited, and Colline becoming a gay man who teases his hetero flatmates about their women troubles. Mimi also abandons embroidery for crochet flower making, while the Christmastide setting is made slightly more obvious in the first two acts. But such tweaks testify to the intelligence of Norton-Hale's approach to a story whose `live fast, die young' motto is more likely to appeal to old hippies who are glad to have made it through than those Gen Zers who have a different take on the notion of instant gratification. This will primarily suit those who may not know much about opera, but know what they like. It also marks a vast improvement on Jonathan Larson's wildly overrated Rent, which was filmed so pedestrianly by Chris Columbus in 2005.

DOLLY.

After a decade making shorts, Rod Blackhurst shot his debut feature, Here Alone, in 2016. He has since completed the noteworthy Netflix documentary, Amanda Knox (2016), and a sophomore fictional feature, Blood For Dust (2023). Now, expanding the 2022 short, Babygirl, he has filmed Dolly has filmed on 16mm in a bid to pay homage to the slasher style launched by Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

Single dad Chase (Seann William Scott) plans to propose to Macy (Fabianne Therese) during a ramble in the woods. She has confided in sister Rachel (Kate Cobb) that she doesn't want to become a stepmom, while his Aunt Sadie (Michalina Scorzelli) has urged him to have fun while she looks after his young daughter, Evy (Eve Blackhurst). Unamused by Macy pretending to have locked him out of the car, Chase leads the way to the beauty spot he has adored since childhood. But he's unimpressed when Macy picks up a couple of dolls that have been left in the undergrowth, close to where some other dolls have been nailed to trees.

What they don't know is that Dolly (Max the Impaler) has a habit of playing with human toys until she breaks them. She then buries then beneath doll head markers in the very woods in which Chase and Macy are walking. When he hears what sounds like a musical box jangling in the near distance, Chase goes to investigate and finds Dolly in her red dress and blonde wig wearing a ceramic doll head with a cracked and empty left eye socket. Thinking she's in distress, Chase tries to console her, only to be lifted off the ground by the neck. Dumped on his back, he is powerless to prevent Dolly from digging a shovel blade into his leg and he is left screaming with pain, as she brings the tool up to his face.

Anxious when Chase fails to return, Macy goes into the woods and finds the toy radio making the tinkly music. She also sees a doll nailed to every tree trunk and is terrified when she bumps into Dolly, who gestures to where the dead Chase is propped up. Macy tries to run away and knocks herself out when she trips. Waking, she finds Dolly looming over her and she's also made to dangle by her throat, as the monstrous mother pops her new daughter over her shoulder and shuffles back towards her old dark house.

Waking to find herself in a rocking crib, Macy realises she has been dressed as a doll. With the door locked, she calls out and a croaky male voice through the wall tells her to play along in order to survive. When the door opens, a doll in a toy pram creaks into the room and Macy gets yanked into the kitchen when she pushes it back too hard and the doll topples forward. Laid out on the table, she tries to protest as Dolly prepares to change her nappy. But she lets it happen after a dummy is placed in her mouth and she remembers the advice from her neighbour.

Meanwhile, Chase has come to in the woods. His jaw is hanging down and he has to drag himself along because he can't put any weight on his shattered shin. But he is determined to rescue his girl. Back in the kitchen, Dolly has put Macy in a high chair and starts feeding her inedible slop with a spoon. In spitting it out, Macy notices the engagement ring that Chase had bought her (and had hidden in his knapsack) and demands that Dolly returns it. She refuses and waddles to the fridge to fetch a feeding bottle, forcing the teat into Macy's mouth. Again, she vomits up the liquid and is appalled to see Dolly approaching her with her left breast out. When she pushes the nipple between Macy's lips, she bites down hard.

Falling out of the chair, Macy runs along a corridor and hears her neighbour tell her through the wall that Dolly keeps the key to the front door in the basement. Making her way cautiously, Macy finds a room filled with dolls and candles. She pulls the key from around the neck of a life-sized doll and is about to leave when Dolly looms behind her and slashes her cheek. As Macy screams, Dolly sits in a chair and pats her lap and she has no option than to sit on her knee while she sews up the gash with a needle and thread. However, while being hugged on the rocking chair, Macy notices the key around Dolly's neck.

Finding herself on Dolly's lap in the morning, Macy unhooks the key and tries to creep away. She hears her neighbour calling out and opens his door to discover a heavily bearded man in chains on the floor. Tobe (Ethan Suplee) thanks her for rescuing him and explains that Dolly has been out of control since her mother died. She sees another corpse in the corner and he identifies him as the brother who had tries to save him. But, no sooner has Macy unlocked the chains than Tobe has her in a headlock with a blade at her throat. He bellows out to his `babygirl' to come and remove the bar from the kitchen door and threatens to kill her toy if she doesn't co-operate.

Stabbing Macy in the face to make her scream so that his daughter knows he's serious, Tobe gloats when Dolly appears in the doorway. She unbolts the door and Macy take the chance to stab Tobe in the back. He is furious with her and turns to punish her when Dolly rams her fist clean through his abdomen and she peers at Macy through the hole before smashing his face in with her shovel. Terrified about what might happen next, as she is returned to her room and Dolly starts smashing things in a rage, Macy hears Chase calling to her from outside. Seizing the moment, she hurls herself at the window and smashes through the glasses to plummet downwards.

She lands beside Chase and tells him that she loves him and accepts his proposal. Kissing his forehead, Macy tries to help him to his feet. But Dolly approaches them with her shovel and, when Chase tells her to leave Macy alone, she rips off his lower jaw and he crumples to the floor (still blinking). Macy tries to run away, but is so confused that she imagines Evy playing with a doll in her delirium and allows herself to be cornered. Dolly lumbers towards her, but Macy fights back and pulls off part of the doll head's broken eye socket.

Fleeing through the woods, she falls into an open grave ringed with dolls. She lands on the headless corpse that Dolly had been burying when Chase first encountered her and Macy uses it to lure her into the hole. Clambering out, Macy grabs the shovel and starts smacking Dolly in the head. As she goes to leave, however, she notices the ring glinting on her finger and almost gets caught by the arm when she jumps into the pit to retrieve it. Deciding she can live without it, Macy runs along the path and finds park ranger Billy (Russ Tiller) putting a ticket on Chase's car. While trying to explain why she's covered in blood, she climbs into his truck, while he radios base to report another doll-face killing. However, he's caught on his heels when Dolly lurches towards him and she lops off his head with her shovel. She starts smashing the windscreen glass, but Macy kicks her through the window and is able to grab the ignition key from beside Billy's body. Driving straight at Dolly, she knocks her over and comes back for the ring before speeding away, cackling with shock and relief.

As the closing credits roll, a country song plays on the soundtrack. It ends with the singer thanking the audience for coming to see the show. He comments on Macy's courage and tuts at the shenanigans that must have gone on in Dolly's family. But he also promises viewers that a sequel is on the way because everyone knows how these things work. And, as if to tee it up, Blackhurst shows us two cops and a man in an orange boiler suit reporting to a superior about what they had witnessed out in the woods.

Blackhurst and co-scenarist Brandon Weavil neatly set the scene by having Macy express trepidation before embarking on her journey into the unknown. They also give the audience time to get used to the fact that Chase isn't Stiffler from the American Pie pictures. Indeed, this may be one of Seann William Scott's most restrained performances, although how do you start to steal a film from someone dressed as a giant doll?

Even after Dolly is vanquished, Blackhurst opts against having Macy remove the doll head to see who lurks beneath (something that would never be allowed to happen in a Scooby-Doo cartoon), which signals that he had a sequel in mind long before the amusing trail in the country ditty. But, given how many times Dolly had bounced back, Macy is wise to put the pedal to the metal as soon as she's got her diamond back. Despite not being seen, non-binary wrestler Max the Impaler makes Dolly an imposing physical presence, while the baby-gurgling in the sound mix makes her all the creepier. Haven Howell's costume design helps here, too, as Dolly's red dress with red trimming makes her look a bit like a sinister Santa. Kyra Botelli's production design is also impressive, with set decorator Kaili Corcoran making a fine job of the nursery, with its rocking crib, toy-lined chest of drawers, and assorted table lamps. These help cinematographer Justin Derry bathe certain scenes in disconcerting coloured light, which contributes to Macy's sense of disorienatation and Dolly's menace.

Her weapon of choice leaves little room for violent invention, although the assault on Chase and the caving in of Billy's face are pretty gruesome (kudos, however, to effects make-up artist Ashley K. Thomas). For the rest, though, it's a matter of crude cudgeling or standard issue slashing, although there are enough scream queenish moments for Fabianne Therese to do Marilyn Burns proud. That said, the pace is sometimes ponderous and it's hard to avoid the feeling that the material has been over-stretched in the expansion from the source short. Moreover, the dark secrets of Dolly's family remain under wraps (presumably to be revealed next time) and this lack of backstory makes everything seem a little arbitrary and implausible, as surely someone must have noticed all those dolls nailed to the trees at such a well-known beauty spot, while if Dolly had nabbed herself quite so many playmates, it seems unlikely that such a volume of disappearances would have gone uninvestigated.