Grange Park Opera

The Love for 3 Oranges

He's been startling audiences for at least two decades, since his 1988 scratch'n'sniff The Love for Three Oranges at English National Opera. Prokofiev's brittle and demanding fairy-tale has scarcely been seen in the UK since, though the two events are not connected. It's a problem piece, requiring a large cast and much suspended belief on the part of the audience. Can it work? Grange Park's new production has a bold shot. The director-designer David Fielding, who has his own nice line in zestful dissent, has opted for theatre-of-cruelty: a clone-like chorus, space-hoppers, Sigmund Freud lookalikes, striped pyjamas, black suits, horn-rimmed glasses and, wisely, hardly a nod at the 18th-century Venetian commedia dell'arte of the Gozzi original.

Written for Chicago on the eve of the roaring 20s, the theme is laughter as the best tonic. A bored prince is terminally depressed. Only when a gorgeous princess bursts out of an orange does he grin. Realism, morality and ordinary human emotion have no place in this artifice, except in the figure of Truffaldino (well sung by Wynne Evans), the court jester. The plot fits together like an elaborate but meaningless piece of origami, and Prokofiev's crisp, angular score glitters and glints like one of the revolving mirror balls that hung from the ceiling.

Conducted by Leo Hussain and skilfully played by the English Chamber Orchestra, the music sounded fresh and clever. Rebecca Cooper's Fata Morgana, Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts' Prince and Clive Bayley's King headed the large and capable cast. If it wasn't always quite slick, the achievement alone was miraculous. Already announced for next year at Grange Park: Tristan und Isolde, and an evening with Bryn Terfel.

By Fiona Maddocks.