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Times
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Die Fledermaus review — a drag queen saves Strauss from disaster
If all else fails, send for a drag queen. That appears to be the thinking at the Grange Festival in Hampshire, where a far from convincing production of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus is rescued by the cabaret artiste Myra DuBois — usually found doing stand-up at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London. Playing the jailer Frosch, who traditionally opens the final act with an improvised monologue, DuBois delivers a string of fruity innuendos and some chaos-generating ad libs that finally get the audience laughing, something that Paul Curran's stuttering staging has largely failed to do up to then. Strenuous overacting from others in the cast doesn't help, and neither does having the dramatic flow disrupted by two hours of intervals — excessive even by country-house opera standards, especially for an operetta with acts no longer than 40 minutes each. Presumably that's to allow time for Gary McCann's detailed 1930s sets to be swapped around. The garish nightclub decor for Act II is particularly striking. And indeed that is where Curran's direction works best, with a chorus of crossdressers and leather-boys high-kicking energetically and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra racing through the Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka under Paul Daniel's breezy direction to add to the score's melodic riches. But it's hard to do a decent Die Fledermaus with a Rosalinde (Sylvia Schwartz) who hardly has enough voice to be heard in duets, let alone to set the sparks flying in her Czardas solo; and her maid Adele played by a singer, Ellie Laugharne, who seems unable to inject charm and grace into that usually delectable showstopper, Mein Herr Marquis. Admittedly, Laugharne doesn't help herself by trying to keep up a completely unnecessary Eliza Doolittle accent even when singing — a disaster for her vocal tone. Trystan Llyr Griffiths, playing Rosalinde's Italian lover Alfred, bursts into snatches of famous tenor arias at every available opportunity, and sings them with such panache that I wouldn't mind seeing him do the parts for real. Ben McAteer is an impressive Falke; when he and the chorus deliver a hushed and tender Brüderlein it's the only really magical moment in the evening. The rest of the cast try desperately hard to be amusing, but the show resolutely fails to catch fire until far too late.★★☆☆☆250minTo Jul 5, @timesculture to read the latest reviews
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Merry Widow review – come for the big tunes, stay for the birthday cement mixer
An enormous rococo sofa dominates the stage. Great artworks jostle for space on the walls – Picasso, Velázquez, a handful of impressionists, and a banner reads 'Happy birthday boss'. Guests pour in from a pinging elevator: a maelstrom of big skirts in Disney princess colours, high-rise hair, three-piece suits and pork pie hats. Out of the window: skyscrapers. In singer turned director John Savournin's latest production for Opera Holland Park – a collaboration with Scottish Opera and D'Oyly Carte Opera – Franz Lehár's hit operetta The Merry Widow switches fictional Pontevedro and Le Gai Paris for New York's mafia underworld and its Sicilian homeland. The plot's patriarch becomes a pinstripe Manhattan godfather, title character Hanna Glawari the widow of a Sicilian lemon-tree racketeer. In their energetic English version, Savournin and David Eaton have fun with Dolmio-level Italian (no less authentic than Lehár's original Balkan Neverland) and these mafiosi reach as often for the TV gangster phrase book – 'Bada bing, bada boom', 'schmuck', 'capeesh?' – as for their guns. Dialogue is delivered in 90% faux mafioso ('family comes foist, bowss!'), 10% operatic RP. In the mostly excellent singing those proportions were reversed. And where the spoken passages were largely shrieked or shouted, the balance in the sung numbers swung in favour of the orchestra: most of the action played behind the pit thus vastly increasing the demands on singers already working in tent-acoustics. So much high-camp melodrama may leave some yearning for a calmer take on Lehár's classic. But, for those with a higher tolerance for hyperactive kitsch and national stereotyping after Lehár's own model, this mid-century Merry Widow is enormously enjoyable. Come for the big tunes, stay for the straight-legged 'Russian' folk dance performed unsmiling in dark glasses, the stage hands in white tie, lemon trees on wheels and the 'birthday cement mixer' (don't ask). For Acts 2 and 3, takis's streamlined set spins to take us from a cypress-equipped villa to the crimson interior of Maxim's – now a 'respectable performance bar' in New York. Bass-baritone Henry Waddington is ideally cast as 'Don' Zeta and evidently had a ball, his comic timing impeccable; Rhian Lois was a vivacious stage presence as his wife, Valentina. Matthew Kellett's Little Italy accent was the best of the bunch, while Christopher Nairne and Connor James Smith made one winning double act as warring Italians, Amy J Payne and Matthew Siveter as another, the ferocious 'Russian' Kromows. But this is also a piece with a big heart. Along with the warm, stylish playing from the orchestra of Scottish Opera under Stuart Stratford, it was the suavity and occasional tenderness of Alex Otterburn's Danilo and Paula Sides's Hanna that made this performance more than the sum of its gags. At Opera Holland Park, London, until 28 June.
Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Trial by Jury/A Matter of Misconduct review — modern farce meets G&S
New operas are rare enough, new operettas rarer still. So Scottish Opera deserves credit not only for putting operetta at the centre of its summer season, but also for commissioning one to sit alongside a classic of the genre. A Matter of Misconduct, at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, is set in the Downing Street press room, and centres on a hapless politician in a party leadership election. Where on earth could it have found its inspiration? Emma Jenkins's libretto channels Armando Iannucci's The Thick of It in its unflinching exposé of political error and human frailty. It even has a foul-mouthed Scot as a spin doctor, played gamely by Jamie MacDougall. Jenkins's language zings along — you have to take your hat off
