This intimate West End venue provides the perfect setting for a light, sophisticated piece of opera theatre, combining a Mozartian score with a witty 21st century libretto, played against a backdrop of sylvan and theatrical images by the French Impressionists.
In the course of an evening, two 30-something couples find their love lives intertwined in a midsummer night’s dream of romance and alfresco opera, as they sup on interval champagne while Clare Kinson’s Puck, a bad fairy clad all in black, stirs their loins and their longings.
Vocal toast of the evening is Cheryl Enever’s gorgeous lyric soprano, stunningly costumed as a rising young diva who sheds her tenor boyfriend, Ian Bloomfield, in favour of her baritone ex, the debonair Tim Armstrong-Taylor. Meanwhile glamorous soprano Lynn Marie Boudreau discovers the delights of dalliance and back stream punting with the tenor lothario Bloomfield.
Think of it as a companion piece to the Menier hit revival of Sunday in the Park With George, but with better tunes, culminating in a modern re-creation of Edouard Manet’s erotic Dejeneur sur l’herbe, as this quartet of mixed-up lovers loll on the picnic lawn - although the clever rhyming lyrics they deliver are more Gilbertian than Sondheim.
A special word, too, for accompanist Kelvin Lim whose fleet keyboard fingering rivals Franz Liszt in bringing orchestral coloration and depth to piano transcriptions of Mozart’s greatest hits.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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