The Marriage of Figaro

Coliseum, London

★★

Michael Church

With ENO fighting for their lives, it’s vital that their output should be top quality, so last week I sampled them two nights in a row. First up was a revival of Mike Leigh’s production of The Pirates of Penzance, and I couldn’t imagine a more brilliant production of that gloriously crazy work. Perfectly cast, immaculately sung, and keeping us on the edge of our seats for every comic twist in the plot, this was an evening in G&S heaven.

Next came Joe Hill-Gibbins’s English National Opera production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, which had been strangled at birth in March 2020. After one sparsely attended performance, it was closed down, a victim of the pandemic which was at that point just getting into gear. So this  ‘revival’ was in effect this show’s premiere.

Hill-Gibbins apparently toyed with the idea of giving the plot a me-too twist – which would have chimed perfectly with the opera’s socio-political intention – but sadly he decided not to go down that road.

Instead he wanted this opera to be taken as an exploration of marriage, with four couples of different ages going under the microscope, starting with Cherubino and Barbarina as the youngest. Figaro’s rocky road to matrimony with Susanna is contrasted with the embittered mid-life manoeuvres of the Count and Countess, and finally with Bartolo and Marcelina, whose cynical machinations are stopped in their tracks by the revelation that Figaro – whom Marcelina is trying to coerce into matrimony – is in fact her long-lost baby son.

Unfortunately this intended message is more than a little hampered by the style in which it’s delivered. The lights go up on a white box with four identical white doors which open in turn to reveal members of the cast. We soon realise that this cliché is going to be worked to death, because it’s literally all there is for a set.

Hubert Francis and Cody Quattlebaum in The Marriage of Figaro ©Zoe Martin

The doors have to do service in all the scenes where the comedy depends on characters being hidden and discovered, and they need to evoke the cluttered reality of the house where the drama unfolds. As the fun gets faster and more furious, we absolutely need sofas and domestic paraphernalia to make sense of the exceptionally intricate plot. All those goddamn doors do is spread confusion.

What’s worse are the desperately laboured sight gags, the bonkers meddle of costumes, and the way the director and designer have decreed that every scene should resemble one of those tiresome magazine features where everyone is constantly freezing in improbable attitudes. All is done as though in a photo-shoot.

Add in moments when the characterisation goes wildly wrong – why does Hanna Hipp’s jealous Cherubino suddenly start doing John Cleese-style goose-steps? – or when the movement style tips over into random bits of commedia dell’arte, and you have a recipe for serious irritation.

Musically speaking, however, there is much to enjoy in this show. David Ireland’s Figaro and Cody Quattlebaum’s Count Almaviva may be colourless creatures, but their female counterparts – Nardus Williams’s Countess and Mary Bevan’s Susanna – turn in performances which are simply glorious. Excellent support comes from Rebecca Evans’s Marcellina and Neal Davies’s Bartolo. And in the pit Ainars Rubikis teases out all the mischief and beauty of the score.

ENO  had four years during which they could either have junked this production, or worked on it, to turn it into something presentable, but as things stand it’s a terrible own goal.