The big set-piece in Patrick Mailler's English-language Wexford Festival Opera Scenes production of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus at White's Hotel is an elaborate dick'n'boob joke. If a flaunting of papiermache mouldings is your kind of thing - Prince Orlofsky's, the biggest, is adorned with its own miniature Russian-style fur hat - then this is probably a Fledermaus for you.
Mailler adopts some insideout techniques. The singers, dressed in black and with blackened eyes, manoeuvre the action through miniature figures, about the size of ventriloquists' dummies. The backstage area and its showtime but not exclusively showrelated activities are brought into view. And, at various times, unsuspecting members of the audience are hauled up onto the stage and into the action.
It all sounds like fun. But the contrivances of the Fledermaus plot become rather obscured in the process of invention, and, at times, despite the enthusiasm and commitment of the young cast, there was more a sense of heavy work than frothy entertainment. Musically, things took a while to settle down, Brian MacKay at the piano having a stuttery time in the overture, and some of the early set numbers showing more signs of strain than were later apparent (the words at all times were not of the clearest). The high point for me was the poised Orlofsky of Sarah Castle, who retained more than most of her colleagues a necessary grasp of musical and social savoir-faire.
Further performances of Die Fledermaus are on Thursday 22nd, Sunday 25th, Wednesday 28th, and Sunday, November 1st.
