Plain English: October 2013 Archives

Once in a while you come across a production that makes you scratch your head - why did the company do this? How could anyone ever have thought this worked?  But it is rare that you see something that makes you wonder why the institution is in receipt of a public subsidy to present a piece that fails not because it's daring or experimental, but just because it's so bad it should never have been staged.

            OK, Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus is not my favourite lyric drama. I lack the taste for Strauss waltzes, so for me it's not even a great operetta. I'd rather see almost anything by Offenbach, Lehàr or come to that, Gilbert and Sullivan.  But I have seen productions of Fledermaus that I could sit through without wanting to boo or leave before the interval, including a decent production at Glyndebourne in 2003 and a not despicable 1989 revival of the Covent Garden 1977 production with choreography by Frederick Ashton.

            This new staging at the English National Opera is co-produced with Toronto, where it was performed last year, which should surely have stopped it being put on at the Coliseum. I (and probably the other national critics) went along because it is directed by Christopher Alden, whose opera track record includes a fine Partenope and a memorable Midsummer Night's Dream; and because the cast includes Tom Randle as Eisenstein and Andrew Shore as Frank.