Wanderlust’s Marriage of Figaro is in tune with the times

Not being all that familiar with opera, I’d always thought the average production involved a full orchestra, a cast of hundreds and a running time of several weeks. But, as Wanderlust Opera proved to a pretty-much-full house on Saturday, that’s not necessarily the case. They managed to tell Mozart’s comic story of love, infidelity and reconciliation with six main performers, ten villagers, the bare minimum of props and a single pianist, who left no ivory untinkled throughout the one hour and 45 minute running time. Plot? Well, let’s just say it’s complicated. Figaro’s about to wed Susanna, Count Lindoro Almaviva plans to invoke his right to bed her first, and there’s assorted carryings on between wives, husbands and other relations.

Slightly incomprehensible as all this is, the cast threw themselves into it. I may not have been all that familiar with the story, but I was surprised by how familiar I was with some of the tunes, which have seeped into pop culture over the years. I particularly liked Barbara Paterson, who played Count Almaviva’s amorous nephew Cherubino and extracted maximum comedy from the old girl-playing-a-boy routine. They were helped by an updated, extremely witty libretto, in which Susanna (Alicia Cadwgan), Figaro’s bride-to-be, bought her wedding veil off Trademe, a delighted Figaro (Stuart Coats) describes a happy turn of events as ‘‘lovely jubbly’’, and the Count’s plan to have Susanna on her wedding night was described as ‘‘your Weinstein agenda’’, after disgraced film producer Harvey. I think old Wolfgang would have approved.