Falstaff, at Opera Holland Park, Seven magazine review

Verdi’s great comic opera has brought out the suburban in directors before and does so again with Annilese Miskimmon’s new staging for Opera Holland Park (its first). She’s set her Falstaff in a post-war convalescent home for wounded soldiers, for some reason lorded over by a robustly healthy fat knight.

Designer Nicky Shaw’s idea of Windsor is a group of simple, garden-shed-like huts that can be turned round to reveal chintzy interiors and horrid Highland prints, the atmosphere of cheery austerity enhanced by scouts, bunting, tea urns and victory roll hairdos.

It doesn’t take long, though, for directorial stays to be loosened in favour of some loopy surrealism. Injured soldiers are knocked about with vigorous abandon, and Ford – his casting as a vicar with Caius as his verger is straight out of Dad’s Army and a brilliant send-up of small-town stereotypes – inexplicably has a chorus of tweed-jacketed, muscular-Christian curates at his beck and call. The church element becomes even more stretched when Mistress Quickly, Alice’s charwoman, is disguised as a nun when she sets up the saucy assignation with Falstaff.

You’d have also thought that Holland Park would have been a sitting duck – or peacock – for some bosky, ghostly magic in the Windsor Park finale, but apart from Mark Jonathan’s spooky lighting, the setting was rather plain and perfunctory, perked up by some good costumes.

Miskimmon, though, directs all the peeking and spying with flair – and she has an excellent knight in the Icelandic baritone Olafur Sigurdarson. I’ve only seen him in dark, smouldering roles, but he’s a terrific comedian – and a very physical one, executing cartwheels and pratfalls fearlessly.

The fact that he is also quite personable, not at all a self-deluding fatso, hints that he’s in there with a chance, and, with all the surreal larking about, “Vecchio John” seems to be the only one marching in time. His appearance in full military fig, all set for a bit of wooing, was glorious, and his singing was warm and generous.

Linda Richardson, Carolyn Dobbin and Carole Wilson were a formidable trio as Alice, Meg and Quickly; there was a fine Ford from George von Bergen, who, as Brooke, gets in touch with his darker side; and Brian Galliford and Simon Wilding were a great double-act as NCOs Bardolfo and Pistola.

With Peter Robinson’s conducting and the City of London Sinfonia’s playing gleefully Italianate, this Falstaff rounds off a strong OHP season.

To Aug 3; www.operahollandpark.com

This review also appeared in SEVEN magazine, free with the Sunday Telegraph

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