★★★★☆
There is plenty of romancing, but precious little romance in Il turco in Italia. Rossini’s ensemble comedy of wandering eyes and wandering hands presents a world in which the female libido is akin to a high-performance car: time-consuming and expensive to maintain. Husbands and wives alike crave distraction, or, worse, devotion. Everyone wants what they can’t have, be it marital fidelity, a new fur coat or a fling with an exotic stranger.
Set in a suavely stylised 1950s travel brochure view of Naples, with a crazy-paving collage of black-and-white tourist snapshots spread across the wide stage, Martin Duncan’s 2011 production has new snap and sexiness in this revival. First time around, the movement direction suggested an end-of-the-pier revue, jarring awkwardly with the pitch-perfect,