Set in the 1930s, with a burlesque dancer as the star of the Act II party, Martin Lloyd-Evans production of Strauss’s hedonistic satire was described as “provocative, engaging entertainment” in The Guardian.
Tim Ashley’s review also noted the “silky-smooth string tone and woodwind brio” of the City of London Sinfonia under John Rigby. Jennifer France returned to OHP as Adele, with Ben Johnson and Susanna Hurrell as Eisenstein and Rosalinde, Samantha Price as Orlofsky and Peter Davoren as Alfred. In The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen praised Gavan Ring’s “beautifully suave” Falke, France’s “spot-on and dazzling” soubrette showpieces and Lloyd-Evans’s pacing. As Neil Fisher wrote in The Times, “the strongest theme in this show is self-deception: everyone is pretending to be someone they aren’t, and it’s only when the whole drunken lot of them are stripped to their undies that the naked truth is revealed.”
