Irresistible hijinks from two neglected operettas
Tales of Offenbach Opera della Luna, Wilton’s Music Hall, E1 ★★★★★
‘The great works of Offenbach have left a vast part of his oeuvre languishing in the shade. It’s easy to forget he was first a virtuoso cellist, the prolific composer of a large amount of more serious music and the author of a rich panoply of imaginative one-act operas, each more wacky than the other.” Thus Opera della Luna’s director Jeff Clarke writes sagely in the programme for a merry evening that does something to redress the balance.
It consists of a double bill of two of those wackily imaginative one-acters that have long languished in obscurity: Croquefer, composed in 1857 and The
Isle of Tulipatan, dating from a decade later.
Both show Offenbach’s peculiar genius for the frothiest musical farce – mildly satirical and a little bit saucy, but demanding nothing from an audience’s intellect or attention span except the ability to laugh at pomposity or absurdity. Fast pace is everything (though in truth Tulipatan comes in five minutes too long), sentiment or sincerity can never linger, and the proceedings must come to a rousing conclusion with a can-can gallop or a round of bing-bang-bong and tralala.
The plots are so slight, mere pegs for jokes and tunes, that they are barely worth relating: in Croquefer, an irascible Crusader meets his deadly foe in a joust caught short by the emetic effect of poisoned wine; in The Isle of
Tulipatan, a mix-up in the cradle results in some adolescent transgendered confusion.
What brings such nonsense alive is the multitasking talent of Jeff Clarke, who pitches the Blackadder level of humour perfectly in free yet faithful translation of the librettos, as well as staging the action in broad pantomime style. His casting is canny, too: a crack team of five – Paul Featherstone, Carl Sanderson, Anthony Flaum, Lynsey Docherty and Caroline Kennedy – all sing with shining ease and vividly animate the cartoon characters. Toby Purser is the galvanising conductor of a small but sprightly pit band, and Elroy Ashmore and Isobel Pellow have designed some super sets and costumes.
What crowns the fun is a special ambience – the auditorium of the beautifully restored Wilton’s Music Hall is intimate enough to allow the text to communicate freely and audience and actors to interact warmly. The net result is irresistible hijinks, offering a salutary lesson to bigger fish such as English National Opera, whose attempts at operetta seem flat-footed and overblown in comparison.