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Originally Posted by rojo
Sybarite- looking forward to your comments about the performance!
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Well, briefly: excellent production values. Good performances all round, although I particularly enjoyed Majella Cullagh as Rosalinde, Amelia Farrugia as Adele and David Kempster as Dr Falke. Robert Tear was Dr Blind, the lawyer, but at close to 70, there's isn't much power left in that voice, I'm afraid.
Stephen Lawless's direction and Benoit Dugardyn's design are superb and work very well together. It's set in a sort of generalised Weimer-style era; indeed, during the party section, there are nods to this, with one member of the chorus appearing briefly in Marlene Dietrich-
Blue Angle mode. And a little later, with Orlofsky's party in full swing, there is a moment when a female member of the cast is seen, her back to the audience, standing on top of a grand piano, champagne glass raised to the heavens, dressed only in a top hat and stockings. It's a very erotic moment, but in the context of the unashamed decadence and debauchery, sits well and isn't gratuitous; indeed, I'd suggest that it emphasises an essential difference between English and Continental farce – that in the latter, flirting can lead to actual sex (the same can be said of 19th-century literature – there's no author to compare to Zola, for instance, in English of the time). It's also, within a Wiemaresque setting, as the sense of impending disaster and doom was one of the motivations for the unbridled hedonism of the Berlin of the time; there's almost the intellectual aftertaste of something darker. Live for today – who knows what tomorrow will bring?
The new translation works well; it's snappy and the dialogue sizzles. Some people tend to think that light opera isn't difficult to do, but you've got the same production values as grand opera, the same musical demands – and you've got to make it fizz like the champagne that so often seems to feature.
There are clearly one or two added jokes – for instance, when Eisenstein rips off Blind's robes to wear them himself, he finds the lawyer wearing only a woman's nightdress beneath. After the initial audience laughter has died down and Eisenstein has been seen to be staring in shock, he asks: "What's that?"
To which Blind replied: "It's my Freudian slip". Howls of laughter from the audience.
There are plenty of visual jokes too; one clever one (in my opinion) concerned the ballerinas. They were dressed as though straight out of a Degas painting, but at one point were seen doing exercises at some bars – but the bars, being vertical parts of the set as opposed to horizontal bars, turned them into pole dancers (which again works, given how they are viewed by some of the male characters).
So, those are my thoughts, 24 hours down the line. As I've already made clear – I enjoyed it hugely.
Thanks so much for sharing that! 
Linear Mode
