Opera review: INO take on l'Elisir d'Amore provides ridiculously good fun
l'Elisir d'Amore, Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, ★★★★★
If you ever meet someone who claims opera is boring and unfun, send them to Cal McCrystal's wacky and wild (west) take on Donizetti's endearing love comedy l'Elisir d'Amore. Send them right now! His production for Irish National Opera is ridiculously good fun, and hasn't a boring moment across a riotous, good-humoured, saucy and physical two-and-a-half hours.
We're used to classic opera getting far-flung, anachronistic settings. It's one of the main tools in the director's bag when it comes to reinvigorating or reinterpreting works we think we know all too well. An excellent 2013 Northern Ireland Opera version of this was set in a 1950s American highschool, for instance. Subtract about a 100 years from that, and you have McCrystal's time and place. Chorus numbers become hoedowns, Abraham Lincoln appears in the theatre (and even survives all the way to the curtain), while Claudia Boyle's Adina becomes a Scarlett O'Hara-type figure.
But McCrystal doesn't stop there. He piles on the visual gags: there's a couple who've stepped out of American Gothic, pitchfork and all; a Laurel and Hardy japering about; and Keystone cops bungling in and out.
Bass baritone John Molloy was a delight as the quack doctor Dulcamara in the 2013 staging. Here, his brand of sardonic, knowing humour is given even more rein as a Wild West snake oil salesman. He gets a speaking part too, where he introduces and comments on the action, ably assisted by his factotum Truffaldino. Ian O'Reilly brings great craft to that speaking role. His incarnation of a ventriloquist's dummy at one point is a real hoot.
Gianluca Margheri, Claudia Boyle and Duke Kim in l'Elisir d'Amore. Picture: Ros Kavanagh
It's exactly what you'd expect from McCrystal, whose physical comedy credits include the Paddington films and One Man, Two Guvnors. His brand of slapstick rather misfired in the Abbey's revival of Lennox Robinson's Drama at Inish in 2019, but he never misses a trick here.
Of McCrystal's numerous movie references, the hardest to miss is Nemorino, Dulcamara's sucker for the titular love potion, and besotted with Adina. He's dressed precisely as Woody from Toy Story, with tenor Duke Kim following the cue of that getup. He accentuates his character's naivety all the way up to an innocently poignant take on the famed aria Una Furtiva Lagrima.
The keen-eyed will spot not "Andy" written on the sole of his foot, but 'Adina', a typically acute detail in Sarah Bacon's superb costumes, which she casts against a relatively sparse, cactus-dotted set. Sara Jane Sheils' lighting is inspired by the shifting tones you'd see in the prairie sky, and neatly marks the progress of time in a plot that hinges on what will or won't happen today or tomorrow.
Amid the uniformly excellent cast, Boyle shows her acting and singing chops to equal measure, delivering comedy, pathos, and sparkle as needed, and singing astoundingly throughout. Gianluca Margheri is charisma itself as Nemorino's rival Belcore, musclebound and really not afraid to show us! His interactions with a chorus full of delineated characters is great fun. Throughout, the words and lines bounce along as the score is deftly marshalled by Erina Yashima, leading the INO orchestra in lively form.
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