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Review: The Marriage of Figaro (London Coliseum)

Review by Sam Waite

 

⭐️⭐️⭐️

 

I recently saw a professional opera singer, through her TikTok account, express that it is best to allow yourself to get a bit lost in the story – after all, so often the language barrier makes full understanding difficult, and continually reading the surtitles takes some out of the moment. This needn't be a concern at the Coliseum, where the English National Opera have re-mounted The Marriage of Figaro, translated by Jeremy Sams into English.

 


Mozarts opera, adapted from a play of the same name – itself a follow-up to The Barber of Seville, charts one particularly madcap day in the home of two aristocrats. The Count, having recently abolished a custom which would allow him lustful access to any female subject, is keen to reinstate this tradition now that his servant, Figaro, is to wed his wife’s, Susanna. None are enamoured with this plan, and hapless pageboy Cherubino is drafted into a game of disguises and deception, all complicated by the arrival of Marcellina, who announces Figaro must repay a financial debt or make her his wife instead.

 

It's all very madcap, and the window-leaping, cross-dressing antics certainly make for a busy day in the Count’s manor. The trouble is, this frantic energy doesn't come across off-stage, where the three hour-plus run-time does begin to drag. Individually, the misadventures are amusing, and the plot threads are fairly compelling, but even at the end of the first act (technically the first two, presented with only a momentary break) it was hard not to wonder if Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte needed to stretch things quite so thin. Perhaps The Marriage of Figaro is simply not the opera for me – while I loved The Pirates of Penzance, and was enraptured with La boheme, there really is no accounting for taste, and I would feel cruel holding a personal distaste for centuries-old work against this production.

 


Indeed, the production has had more than enough to contend with without my sour grapes added to the mix. Originally set for the  2020 season, this Figaro held only a single performance before being shut down along with the rest of London’s theatre district. With that misfortune in mind, it's hard not to be impressed with the tenacity of director Joe Hill-Gibbins, who stands proudly among the many creatives who pulled their projects out from the ashes of a truly catastrophic period for the arts. His work here is solid, keeping a firm handle on the farcical storytelling and finding consistently fun uses for the quartet of doors in Johannes Schütz’s set.

 

This set, a stark white wall with four doors, proves surprisingly effective, the different doors leading this way and that as the imagined rooms require, while the eventual garden scenes take place below this room once it has been raised overhead. A minimalist approach familiar to many recent theatregoers, the effect does unfortunately become a sense of lacking, where the grandeur of the Coliseum begins to overwhelm the simplicity on its stage. Astrid Klein’s costuming, though very attractive and often very informing of character, only does so much to establish setting and period, modern touches not quite adding up without a decorated home to match.



Led by David Ireland in the titular role, the cast are as strong of voice as you would expect from the ENO. Particular praise must go to the Countess, a silvery, utterly beguiling Nardus Williams, and to the hilarious work of Hanna Hip as lovestruck pageboy Cherubino. That same soprano-cum-TikToker referenced earlier also noted that opera is often more focused on the strength of the vocals than of the stage acting on show, and while this ensemble of singers manage plenty in the way of characterisation and charming humour, there are signs of this habit at play. When the Count, sung richly by Cody Quattlebaum, enters he is half-dressed and loutish, suggesting a slovenly, uncaring take on the character – once fully-suited, most traces of this vanish to a somewhat generic wealthy villain archetype, whether this is the fault of Hill-Gibbins for not following through, or Quattlebaum’s own failing in bringing this characterisation to the remainder of his work. Both are clearly very talented, so I wouldn't dare to presume either way.

 

I am, of course, displaying the bit-picking traits the writing of reviews necessitates. The Marriage of Figaro, whether this production or the opera itself, may simply not be to my taste. Hardly a seasoned opera patron, I found it curious that the translation into English jarred me, and that I could t help but wish the Italian libretto had been left as it was, and the surtitles’ approximate translation had been my gateway into the story. While likely the case with the original text to those who speak the language, certain repetitions or oddly blunt phrases make me chuckle in a way I don't think was intended, while certain moments that were definitely supposed to make me laugh failed for similar reasons.

 


In a classic case of the wrong audience member for the work being presented, a triumphant curtain call showed that many of my qualms weren't shared by the rapturous audience. Yes, I did overhear a seasoned opera-goer bemoan that in this version they struggled to keep up with who was playing what role, but immediately before I had heard another announce how incredible the production was. Art was never meant to be seen the same way by everyone it reaches, and while my own hesitations may seem numerous, it would take a colder heart than mine not to acknowledge the talent and the drive that led to a clear crowd-pleaser of a performance.

 

The Marriage of Figaro plays at the London Coliseum until February 22nd

 

 

Photos by Zoe Martin

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