Opera Holland Park, London
Oliver Platt’s anachronistic take on Mozart’s comedy works well in OHP’s opening production, with superb ensemble performances
If you go to Opera Holland Park this summer, you may well find yourself sitting in an imitation Regency chair, as I did on opening night. Ever the most resourceful of companies, OHP have carefully and ingeniously tackled the issue of Covid safety with a new auditorium, designed by takis, that leaves the side walls open to the breeze and uses a flexible seating plan so that chairs can be grouped and regrouped as necessary. The chairs are recycled from previous productions – from other theatres as well as OHP’s own – whence the period furniture for the audience.
takis has also designed the opening production, a new staging of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, conducted by George Jackson and directed by Oliver Platt, a quirky, gaudily handsome piece of theatre in which the 18th century collides with the modern. A periwigged chorus waves cheerleader pom-poms as they sycophantically praise Julien Van Mellaerts’s libidinous count. Samantha Price’s Cherubino, already in military uniform, sings Voi Che Sapete holding the song’s rolled-up text like a microphone and looking like a 1980s New Romantic star, while the nocturnal confusions of act four are played out by flashlight.
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