The Perfect Picnic

Published Wednesday 16 January 2008 at 13:05 by John Thaxter

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.