There was a moment on entering Lost and Found’s production of Bernstein’s Trouble and Tahiti when I hesitated. I was walking through a stranger’s house and instinctively turned to greet Dinah in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Then I remembered this was just a set and hurried past a boy at the kitchen table to take my seat on the patio.

This is the magic of Perth opera company Lost and Found: they present opera so physically and emotionally close to the audience that the work takes on an (often uncomfortable) personal resonance. Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess likes to plumb the psychological depths of opera and so Bernstein’s exploration of a loveless marriage is set in a suburban home in Perth’s affluent western suburbs where the lure of white goods and ‘silver screens’ is just as potent as it was in 1951.

^{Helen Sherman and Christopher Tonkin in Trouble in Tahiti. Photos © Kristoffer Myhre}

Sam and Dinah have a picture perfect life but despite their possessions and accomplishments they are trapped in a dysfunctional marriage. From my seat on the patio I could see wilted...