Subject: Cosi fan tutte, Drill Hall, London 8Nov97 Ferrando Robert Millner Guglielmo Tim Bruce Don Alfonso Richard Chew Fiordigli Caz Weller Dorabella Mary Lincoln Despina Maria Kesselman Original directors Nicholas Broadbent/William Relton Music director/translation Tony Britten Assistant director Ian Bloomfield Conductor Jonathan Gill Music Theatre London This was my first visit to the Drill Hall, a smallish performance space in a building of rehearsal studios in the area off Tottenham Court Road dominated by the University of London. Music Theatre London have been there before, though. They visit every year with music-theatre versions of opera warhorses, cast with young actors and singers from West End shows. (I'm pretty sure this Cosi has been round before.) Cosi is about class and sex, which seems to me to make it both tempting and almost impossible to update. The ancien regime isn't the same as post-war white collar white men defending their right to undemanding jobs that pay enough to keep them in total control of their families. This production had the men as present-day RAF pilots and the women as middle-class Birds of a Feather. Despina was a street wise slapper who might have a job, the other two had a Range Rover and prozac. The Albanians were slightly anachronistic American servicemen (tropical uniforms...). Don Alonso's cynicism was motivated apparently by his being Scottish. All very television inspired. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. The perfection of the music got lost, though the seven-piece band, including the conductor on keyboards, delivered the essentials surprisingly effectively. And the singing often demonstrated that Mozart might be simple but he isn't easy. But the performances were all well conceived and effective, and the sets were witty. (There was a trompe l'oeil perspective fence which the chaps climbed under as required. The first scene was in the showers, and Despina went to work on the women in the ladies' at a club.) Maria Kesselman as Despina was particularly impressive, and she also came close to singing the music as you'd expect to hear it, admittedly with the least demanding part. (I last saw her as an infuriating Ruthie the the National Theatre Lady in the Dark -- I think she'll be very famous quite soon.) Richard Chew was suitably heavy and nasty as Don Alfonso. I found his accent quite puzzling -- his speech seemed consistent but not totally convincing. I'm not sure whether the problem was his acting or the accent itself. The two couples were broadly comic, and lacked any emotional complexity -- Caz Weller did Fiordigli as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, quite convincingly. The spoken dialogue presented the couple's motivations in modern terms, with a few extra jokes to keep things moving, so this was part of the production and not the fault of the performers. Altogether, quite good value. If you know Cosi, you'd might well enjoy the fun of the updated concept. If you don't, you might well want to see a conventional production after seeing this one. On until Wednesday 12 November, then 20-25Nov, with La Boheme in between. Both productions are on tour in the UK until March next year.