The Embalmer, Almeida at King's Cross, London

The politics of preservation

The 49-year-old Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli, whose The Embalmer received its premiere last Wednesday, has been a favourite at the Almeida, with productions of Experimentum Mundi (the one with an ensemble of artisans) and The Cenci (the very lurid one involving Ian McDiarmid) in the mid 1990s. With composers worldwide queueing up for attention, this might seem an over-indulgence, but the results have undeniably been impressive.

Like its predecessors, this version of The Embalmer avoids singing, though an alternative one for baritone also exists. At the Almeida, McDiarmid is virtually the sole protagonist as Alexei Miscin, the eponymous anti-hero in Renzo Rosso's story of an embalmer who takes charge of Lenin's preserved corpse. Unluckily for him, the body has, it eventually transpires, been none too well looked after. Unless, of course, it's Miscin himself – who gets filthy drunk on the job and spends more time ruminating on what Communism did for Russia, the torture and disappearance of his parents and his unhappy marriage – who is actually responsible. But then, whatever his own failings may be, the tale itself is presumably an allegorical commentary on post-Soviet Russia. In the last stages of this 85-minute, single-act theatre piece, poor old Lenin dissolves rather spectacularly into dust. Miscin concludes that the only solution is for him to take his place.

With David Parry's vividly loud-mouthed English translation as his catalyst, McDiarmid makes the performance – his swansong as the Almeida's outgoing co-Artistic Director – into a typically terrific tour de force. Amid the paraphernalia of his trade, he creates a readily believable, physically coarse, manically energetic character out of this sad figure, who has a wickedly macabre sense of humour about his own predicament. William Kerley's production and Christopher Oram's designs do McDiarmid proud.

About Battistelli's music, robustly played by a raucous, bottom-heavy backstage ensemble conducted by Parry, I'm not quite so sure. Its general air of insolence suits the subject matter well, and it helps, if somewhat erratically, to drive the drama. But too often this music responds to words and action too literally, and occasionally with maudlin sentimentality, though the evocation of the old USSR national anthem at the onset of Miscin's final degradation is a masterstroke. And while Alvise Vidolin's sound design offers a good balance between stage and ensemble, its higher pretensions – via a separate sound installation in the bar, which occasionally interposes on the action in the auditorium – don't make much impression.