Review Roundup of Stephen Plaice’s reworked Offenbach at Glyndebourne.
Stage
Stephen Plaice’s (LINK) adaptation of Offenbach’s Mesdames de la Halle, IN THE MARKET FOR LOVE, has been charming critics at Glyndebourne. Here’s what a few had to say:
"Wittily reworked by Stephen Plaice...Mesdames de la Halle is an Offen-ready treat."
The Guardian ****
“There’s a thrown-together, on-the-hop feel to it – the set is clearly a raid on the company’s store house – but it’s a full staging, with first-rate singers and a small but polished ... That’s several causes for celebration right there.”
The Times ****
“In the Market for Love is a slight, daft piece and the gamble of this “Covid” production by Stephen Langridge, with a new English libretto by Stephen Plaice, is that it pushes to the foreground the things that some of us might like to forget, at least for an hour: masks, visors, 1/2/3-metre rules, squirts of sanitiser.”
“With boisterous direction, and the whole cast romping cheerfully over Offenbach’s bouncy galops and flirtatious waltz songs, it’s surely the most fun any of us will have in the opera house for the foreseeable future, and a million times more helpful, right now, than the incoming tide of earnest new-music commissions about the trauma of lockdown.”
The Stage ****
“Irrepressible energy, irreverent wit and a terrific ensemble performance bring some brightness into the prevailing gloom”