In the biographies section of the Whirlwind programme, Keith Warner, director of over 150 operas including The Ring at Covent Garden, finds himself next to Louise Turner, who attends the Byker Bridge Day Centre for homeless people across the Tyne from the Sage. You can never quite separate content from context in this live performance, the singer from the song. When the true story of the loss of a whole fishing village is enacted by a company of people with experience of homelessness - albeit led by consummate professionals - we are involved in ritual as well as art.

Jason Southgate's simple yet suggestive set puts a white rock in a circle of pebbles as reflective as water. Ben Dunwell's story is straightforward but layered, centring on Lizzie May Prettyjohn (a real historical figure), who tells two American tourists about the destruction of her Devon community in 1917 after a commercial dredger scooped up the shingle bank that protected it from easterly gales. Only Lizzie's cottage was left.

On stage, the action is led and unified by Heather Shipp as the older Lizzie. She and Rowan Fenner as her young self are given operatic musical lines by composer Will Todd, while the 27 (amateur) villagers sing unison choruses deriving from a more popular tradition. Miraculously, they fit together, answered by fiddle, flute and horn, more expressionist percussion and electronics.

Streetwise Opera's hour-long tale is about loss, but Warner's production is epic in its stage pictures and intimate in its detail, delivering a profounder hope.