Figaro

Charles Morey’s adaptation of Beamarchais’ 1778 play has some funny lines, and some of those that satirise politics still ring true today, but the story itself is relatively bland without the music and arias that Mozart used when he adapted the play for the opera stage. Sure, Figaro and Suzanne’s plots to outwit the predatory Count make for some comical situations, but this production requires a lot more experience to find the pace and energy required by commedia dell’arte pranks that would make the production.

Most of the action occurs before a very tall and very pink semi-circle of flats that is unrelieved by very much decoration or by subtle lighting. A change to the Count’s garden in the last scenes of the play is much more imaginative and clever, hanging baskets and topiary providing a colourful foreground.

Ted Crosby is a well-spoken and expressive Figaro, making the most of the asides to audience that are a feature of the play. As his fiancée, Suzanne, Yasmin Arkinstall is expressive and together they establish a playful relationship that is engaging.

Paul Murton plays the lascivious Count with exaggerated pomp and covetous eyes.

His wife, the Countess, is played by Molly Haddon, who finds some of the nobility that is lacking in the behaviour of her husband. Melanie Robinson plays the grasping Marceline, Douglas Rumble plays Dr Bartolo.

Tim Murphy bumbles around the stage as Cherubin, doubling a poker-faced Doublemain in the court scene. Eric Hong plays the drunken Antonio, Constance Khoo his flirtatious daughter, Franchette, and Matthew Grasso the luckless equerry, Basile.

The pace of the production may pick up as the run proceeds, but it is perhaps the adaptation itself that pulls the action back.

Carol Wimmer