★★★★☆
To observe that this Investec Opera Holland Park production is all at sea would be literally correct. Oliver Platt’s Mozart staging is entirely located on the promenade deck of a 1930s ocean liner, with Neil Irish’s set ingeniously (if occasionally wonkily) opening out to reveal the cabins behind.
That cleverly solves one problem with any updating of Don Giovanni. So much of the story depends on the 18th-century class deference that allows an aristocratic philanderer to bonk other men’s women with impunity. By the mid-20th century an ocean cruise was among the few social contexts where those anachronistic class distinctions were not only preserved, but enshrined in the very layout of the ship.
To begin with, then, Platt’s concept seems plausible, but then