Candide review – WNO go for broke with picaresque, Pythonesque craziness

Any company putting on a new staging of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta has to plot a route through what the composer himself called its “chequered career”. The task is not unlike the dangerous journey across two continents on which Voltaire sends Candide – his gullible Gulliver of a hero – in search of the truth of human existence. In this post-truth era, his search is arguably even more relevant, if ultimately impossible; it’s not as if there’s been an end to the disasters or wars which Voltaire invoked through the figure of Dr Pangloss so as to lampoon the optimism of Leibniz’s philosophy that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”. Reality was worse then and is no better today. Voltaire was dipping his pen in vitriol: Bernstein and his various lyricists followed suit with their sophistication and mockery and, in emphasising the picaresque, Pythonesque craziness, this Welsh National Opera production goes for broke.

They and director James Bonas opt for the Lonny Price version in full Broadway mode: singers are mic’d, sound is amplified, not just upping the volume but adding a touch of distortion and taunting the ears. That a sound designer is credited – let them be nameless and, anyway, isn’t it the conductor who designs the sound? – suggests no one quite trusted Bernstein’s balance of voices and instruments. It’s the natural fizz and elan of his score that makes it irresistible but, here, it’s as though the whole thing has had the soda-stream treatment, extra bubbliness forcefully injected.

Animation – witty and very slick – created by Grégoire Pont is the novel added element, permitting the extraordinary roll-call of Voltaire’s original episodes and Hugh Wheeler’s book to be depicted without recourse to scenery. For a touring show, it’s a neat compromise, costumes underlining the analogy of then and now. With the orchestra and conductor Karen Kamensek on stage – upstage – mostly hidden by an opaque black front curtain on which the animated visuals were projected, the action happened downstage, with three sets of steps for variety of levels. Yet, constraint on space was no obstacle to cramming in singers, actors, a musical theatre ensemble as well as the chorus, frenetic and all generally busting a gut, as in the Auto da Fé. Lillian Hellman’s original 1956 libretto was abandoned for being too serious: this treatment is arguably not serious enough. Some of the grotesque characterisations might have made even Bernstein raise an eyebrow, though he would not have disapproved of the chutzpah.

Gillian Bevan combined the roles of narrator and Dr Pangloss, a nod perhaps to Hellman’s and Dorothy Parker’s connections with the piece. Tenor Ed Lyon, as Candide, stood out vocally, with Claudia Boyle his gaily glittering Cunégonde. Their final realisation that a Garden of Eden will be found in simple work and honest cultivation emerges still as the strongest maxim for life, even if shouted out too loud.