Andrew Shore / Recensioner

McCrystal has no inhibitions about hamming everything up to the max, given a huge leg up by designer Paul Brown – it’s so sad that Brown died in November, robbing him of the chance to see his work made real. Brown’s sets and costumes are beautifully executed, a riot of colour and fun, and difficulties like “how to turn a bunch of not exactly young and sylph-like chorus members into sweetly tripping fairies” are handled with panache. Stagecraft is nothing short of superb: the sheer amount of movement from the chorus is jaw-dropping, and there is exuberant use of things like people flying above the stage or the random apparition of animal puppets (check out the Fairy Queen’s use of the unicorn’s horn). McCrystal can’t resist putting in a bunch of additional gags, many of them visual but some spoken: the vast majority of them worked, with the audience in stitches.

Les costumes victoriens sont très colorés et fantaisistes et le décor composé par de très poétiques toiles peintes à l’ancienne pour les scènes d’extérieur est parfaitement efficace. Ils sont dus à Paul Brown, un décorateur très prisé au Royaume-Uni, disparu peu avant le début de cette production. Un bain de bonne humeur et d’humour très singulier (le fameux humour camp) apte à réconcilier avec ce genre si particulier ceux qui pensent qu’il n’est guère exportable.

In the event, those performers communicated their fears, anxieties and desires vividly with the audience, who loved it all. Not surprising, since this was a magnificent cast headed by ENO Harewood Young Artist Božidar Smiljanić, as a firmly-voiced Figaro with superb stage presence. Silver-voiced Louise Alder led the feminine side as his feisty Susanna, along with Elizabeth Watts as a disconsolate Countess whose soliloquies on the loss of the Count’s love were superbly delivered, with Johnathan McCullough showing mystified resolution as a notably youthful Count. Singing in the witty translation by Jeremy Sams, the diction was so good I don’t recall glancing at the surtitles more than once or twice, and there was not a weak member of the cast in that respect, helped perhaps by the acoustic of the rectangular box.

Sometimes simple solutions really do work best. Joe Hill-Gibbins’ new production of The Marriage of Figaro for English National Opera stages Mozart and Da Ponte’s tangle of intrigues and concealments along a row of four identical doors in a white box. It’s a revelation: this is, after all, a piece in which the issue of who’s in on the joke (and who’s out) is crucial – and the humble door is its ideal multiway tool.