Put more simply Cities on the Move is a mess whose point is

Put more simply, “Cities on the Move” is a mess whose point is its messiness: by playing on our expectations of order in art galleries, the Hayward’s show immerses us in the idea of Asian urban disorder. Various separable themes stand out from this curatorial Babel – the poignant absence of people from bedsits and tuk-tuks seems an understandable fantasy for artists who have to work without privacy, and Americanisation is predictably rife – but the overwhelming sense is of a larger, Koolhaasian whole.Those of you who think that celebrity chefs should stay in the kitchen may find this irritating. My own feeling is that, for all the evident cleverness of Koolhaas’s design, there is a distant but patronising whiff of Eurocentricity. More to the point, on the day I visited it at least, it simply didn’t work. The missing factor was people: recreating a simulacrum of overpopulation is all very well, but walking through it by yourself is faintly embarrassing, like sailing alone through a Tunnel of Love.The Hayward Gallery does owe Koolhaas a debt of gratitude, though. Whatever the shortcomings of its engagement with the East, the show’s engagement with the gallery is breathtaking.

The Hayward can seldom have had such demands made on its flexibility as a showing space, and it rises to them with ease Even its new watch-tower has a certain charm. Those who would like to tear the place down should take note.’Cities on the Move’: Hayward, SE1 (0171 928 3144) to 27 June. Opera-goers don’t need Bruno Bettelheim to tell them about myth as a mirror of the society that invents it. They have Jonathan Miller’s Mikado, which abandoned all pretence at orientalism and exposed the piece as a palm-court gathering of English gentry. They have David Poutney’s Rusalka, which read the story of the water-nymph as a nursery dream of romance and escape.

Now, at Glyndebourne, they have Graham Vick’s new Pelleas et Melisande, which plays Debussy’s fable as an enigmatic parlour- game among the fin-de-siecle bourgeosie. The curtain rises not on forests, castles and a wandering knight, but on a massive art-nouveau interior that Victor Horta might have built in Brussels. It’s impressive, opulent, and very likely Vick’s response to all the criticism of his minimalist shows in recent years “You wanted spectacle,” this set declares. “Well, here it is, and more.”
But what makes the design so fabulous, apart from the vast spiral staircase that dominates it and must have cost several fortunes to build, is a clear- glass floor that the designer Paul Brown has underlaid with carpets of flowers. As the lights change, it becomes a melting boundary between the world of bankers (or whoever owns this grand house) and the world of their dreams, anxieties, desires. And as the staging negotiates this inner world, it replaces the traditional theatre-magic of Pelleas with something just as valid and, perhaps, more telling: an intense, choking despair which goes to the very heart of the piece.Of course, if you ask 10 people what Pelleas is about, you get 10 different answers.

Beyond the absolute core narrative of a prince who kills his brother over their love for the same woman, this is symbolist drama, shrouded in unanswered questions. It’s only when you sit down to write a synopsis of the piece – as I once did – that you realise how much of the action is assumed from, rather than explicit in, the text. And that gives directors a considerable licence, which Vick readily accepts. But one clear thing is that this is a sterile community in which no one truly connects with anyone else: a family lost in its own dysfunction.