| Press Comments |
The Times - Robert Thicknesse, Regents Park, 16 July 2002 **** |
| First, a health warning: if you think that fruit-related jokes - slipping on a banana skin, making false teeth out of orange peel - are just about the funniest things in the world, then this is for you. However, it is possible that the more serious-minded will think they've died and gone to hell. A (very) few escapees at half-time made the point. For the rest of us it was an evening of painful hilarity, only added to by the Metropolitan Police who, having spotted a Muslim in Regent's Park, proceeded to buzz us in their helicopter for an hour. Garsington, eat your heart out. This Barber opens in Pagliacci-land with a broken-down truck of squabbling travelling players improvising their show to pass the time while waiting for the AA. Warning bells jangle: is this not the dreaded commedia dell' arte, too loud, too slow and, above all, not funny? But don't panic. Soon the action is under way, in a Seville where Doctor Bartolo (Darron Moore) looks and sounds like Sean Bean playing Baron Samedi, Basilio (Martin Nelson) is the spit of Bela Lugosi, and the show is run by Ian Jervis as an incompetent, impossibly camp Figaro (well, he's a hairdresser, isn't he?). Garden Opera, who are touring this production around 30-odd open-air venues until September, may pretend to be a bunch of amateurs, but they know when to play it straight, and this is more than a send-up of Rossini: like the composer, they are in the business of laughing at everything. Musical standards are decently high: the company includes the bass Keel Watson, who was Covent Garden's Bosun in Billy Budd, and the five-strong band, dressed à la bohème and directed from the piano by Peter Bridges, imitates an orchestra with amazing success. This is real opera, with the characters coming alive in the music. Alison Kettlewell sings Rosina as the Becky Sharp of opera, her roulades a perfect expression of minxy scheming; Declan Kelly's all-round acting carries the show along as Almaviva, Bartolo, Basilio and Berta (some really good singing from Anne Bourne) are perfect foils. Jervis's Figaro goes to the limits of buffo-dom but not too much further. The high points, inevitably, were the idiocies of the first act finale and the let's-go trio in Act II, most of which I struggled to see through helpless tears: seamless blends of music and inspired farce, timed to the instant and a masterclass of insouciant theatrical sophistication. Forget Brecht: Rossini (with a hand from director Martin Lloyd-Evans) can tell you more about irony and alienation techniques in five minutes. Give yourself a break and call them now." |