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CANDIDE

                             Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff *****

Spoiler alert for everything about this, the most joyous, exhilarating show I have ever seen in well over half a century of reviewing.

Leonard Bernstein’s love-child struggles to find an identity: is it an opera, an operetta, a musical, and do any of the many revisions of the work help this categorisation? Who actually cares, when director James Bonas unveils a revelation bubbling with wit, giving space for wonderful vocal expression, and inspiring a set and lighting design by Thibault Vancraenenbroeck (in the good old days of overnight reviews that would have been a nightmare to dictate) and Rob Casey respectively. And alongside all this comes the amazing video and animation masterminded by Gregoire Pont.

Into these fascinating visual delights the performers slot into whatever bit of scenery, whether static or mobile, next comes along. This production is so slick, and so engrossing, and one little tip, you will find the sheep irresistible.

And the music? Conductor Ryan McAdams allows the amazing players of the WNO Candide Orchestra (strange nomenclature) to shine where appropriate, all the while shaping a wonderful vocal response from those onstage. Ed Lyon is a totally appealing Candide, perpetually baffled about the directions in which Fate is taking him, in this, the best of all possible worlds (the philosophical theory satirised by Voltaire in his Candide novella, and here expounded by the Pangloss of Rakie Ayola, equally communicative whether as singer or audience-engaging narrator), and Soraya Mafi conquers the heights as his love-tossed soulmate Cunegonde in “Glitter and be gay”. Aled Hall makes an almost televisually slapstick lecherous Governor of Montevideo, and, perhaps above all, the panache displayed by Amy J Payne’s Old Lady is extraordinary.

Add to all this the imaginative choreography of Ewan Jones, and the vivacious contribution of the WNO Chorus, many of them taking minor parts, and this is a production which just climbs and climbs.

Ending with the moving tableau which seals the concluding chorus, “Make our Garden grow”. That leaves an unforgettable image in this grateful mind.

Christopher Morley

*Sadly, the nearest this production is coming to Birmingham (which used to be WNO’s second home, for a fortnight at a time) is Bristol.

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