Pratfalls, dropped trousers and uninhibited vulgarity
The Merry Widow London Coliseum, WC2 ★★★★★
Although operetta and the classic musical comedies should be on English National Opera’s regular à la carte, they’ve had extraordinary difficulty over the decades in finding the right singers and productions for the dishes – only Jonathan Miller’s brilliant revisiting of The Mikado has really hit the spot (it’s rumoured to be returning yet again next season, 34 years after its premiere). What’s the problem?
The fundamental obstacle is the vast size of the Coliseum, which doesn’t show much mercy to lighter voices, or encourage either snappy delivery of dialogue or an intimate relationship between stage and audience. Everything has to be sung up front, acted in semaphore and slightly slowed down in order to project to the back of the balcony, which means goodbye to the lightning pace and delicate wit that is the sugar and spice of this repertory.
So director Max Webster has probably done the right thing with his knockout new staging of Lehár’s The Merry Widow: to hell with the idea that this is a fragrant romantic comedy that should tug at the heartstrings and evoke the tristesse of Europe on the brink of the Great War, he just hits you straight between the eyes with colourful spectacle and broad farce.
Taking advantage of a liberal new translation by April de Angelis (book) and Richard Thomas (lyrics), replete with panto banter, mild obscenities and double entendres (I confess to laughing out loud at one about what happens to the stuff that hits the fan), Webster and his designers Ben Stones and Esther Bialas present a lavish chocolate-box picture of Belle Époque Paris that ignores period decorum and inserts modern sexual politics.
There are also pratfalls, dropped trousers and lascivious chorines a-plenty. Chez Maxim’s becomes more like something out of Weimar Republic Berlin, and the overall level of humour is pretty heavy-handed – Valencienne and Camille’s ambiguous tryst in the greenhouse now takes place under a table and the men’s septet becomes an anti-metoo rant spouted at a row of urinals where the joke goes too far.
Lehár’s genius survives it all thanks to Kristiina Poska’s cheerful unfussy conducting, and a lovely performance by Sarah Tynan in the title role. The one character who isn’t costumed circa 1910, she presents a Forties blonde bombshell, suggesting just the right edge of gold-digger cynicism and peasant shrewdness.
Nathan Gunn is a regular old roué of a Danilo, with a touch of Cary Grant about his doltishness, and Andrew Shore does another terrific comic turn as the splenetic dotard Baron Zeta. Sadly, I was uncharmed by Rhian Lois and Robert Murray as Valencienne and Camille – both sang very well indeed, but neither radiated the freshness of youthful infatuation. And the chorus was in excellent fettle.
The audience palpably loved every minute and although it must have cost a bomb (no co-producers are credited), I guess it will prove to be a massive bankable hit, of the kind ENO badly needs if it is to stand confidently on its own feet again.
Did I enjoy myself? Quite honestly, no: I found it relentless, unsubtle and lacking in sophistication, and consider Opera North’s much less strident version directed by Giles Havergal far more nuanced and appealing. But over the coming years this uninhibitedly vulgar Merry Widow is going to give a lot of people an evening of harmless pleasure, and I can’t argue with that.