{TABLE} Tosca ................ Puccini {/TABLE} IT'S not so long since Hollywood was celebrating, in biopic form, the work of the late Ed Wood, often claimed as "the worst director ever". Eric Vigie's new Tosca for DGOS Opera Ireland could well be read as an attempted celebration through the medium of opera of the hairy plot lines and quirky inconsequentiality of an Ed Wood film.

Vigie (who is credited with design and lighting design as well as direction) opens the opera with a tableau of the super tall, oriental baddie, Scarpia clutching the unfortunate Angelotti, before dumping him on the floor and disappearing, Mephistopheles like, through a trap door.

The camp painter Cavaradossi, who works in the Attavanti chapel on a painting of a nude blonde cupping her right breast, boasts the services of a Harpo Marx lookalike flunkey. But Cavaradossi is thoroughly outcamped by a Tosca who never looks happy but she might burst with Joy, never looks sad but she might try to do away with herself. And the crowd in the church for the Te Deum at the end of the act appear zombie like in black hoods, possibly having strayed off the set of Night of the Living Dead.

The major innovation of Act II is Vigie's introduction of the Madonna ex machina. As Tosca looks for the murder weapon, a curtain on one of the walls magically lifts to reveal what appears to be a stone Madonna holding a wooden cross. Tosca rises to the bait. After apparently failing in a thrust at his crotch, Tosca finally manages to stake Scarpia in the back maybe underneath that mean, Eastern exterior he's really some rare breed of werewolf who needs to be dealt with in this way.

There are novelties in Act III, too, and - surprise, surprise - there's even a surprise ending. Funny thing about this Ed Wood style entertainment, though, I can't recall hearing a single laugh, either real or born of embarrassment.

This Tosca offers a lot of forthright singing, too much, in fact, from Paul Lyon's Cavaradossi and Jane Thorner's Tosca for any meaningful trespass into characterisation. Max Wittges's Scarpia, however, doesn't deliver vocally to match his appearance, and on the opening night he quite ran out of voice in Act II.

The chorus sounds in fine form, and the RTECO responds well to conductor Martin Merry, who strikes admirably judged balances between stage and pit yet, in spite of whipping up some noisy climaxes, dawdles more than he drives.