The perfect antidote to a cold winter's evening - A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ENO, London Coliseum, review 

Given the arctic conditions outside, a midsummer night certainly seemed like a dream, lending this performance of Britten’s enchanting opera special warmth and allure. A large audience drank it all in with rapt attention, pleasure and enthusiasm – how encouraging to realise that this marvellous music has finally come good at the box office.

For this revival, ENO has dropped Christopher Alden’s schoolyard production of 2011 and reverted to Robert Carsen’s 1991 version. This is probably a good move: I enjoyed Alden’s warped vision of the piece more than most, but I can see that its perversities might have palled with repetition, whereas Carsen has laid on a perennial crowd-pleaser.  

For my astringent taste, its whimsical inventiveness verges on the cutely Disneyfied – something too sugar-coated and gift-wrapped about its charm means that the edge and menace in both text and score is neutered. Nothing seems dangerous, nothing haunts or terrifies: it becomes a bedtime story without any scarey bits.

But I’m not complaining: in Michael Levine’s designs, playing on the contrast between midnight blue, forest green and white moonlight, look absolutely gorgeous, and Carsen himself appears to have returned to spruce it all up. The action has been crisply rehearsed. It is also expertly played by the orchestra under Alexander Soddy and very well sung by the sort of cast that ENO should be fielding every time.