If we believe what the opera tells us, the title character in Mozart’s Don Giovanni has been energetically single-minded in pursuit of sex.
The catalogue kept by his manservant has more than 2,000 entries, so to speak, all of them women. Does anything change if the sex is gay rather than straight? That’s the question asked by Queer Collective’s new production, retitled Don Jo and premiered as part of the Arcola’s Grimeborn opera season.
As Grimeborn’s budget dictates, this version is heavily reduced in terms of both plot and music, it’s sung in a freewheeling translation by director Leo Doulton, and the genders of several roles have been switched.
Much of the music consists of a pre-recorded montage of musical fragments, some Mozart, some not (if I remember rightly, Lady Marmalade is not one of Mozart’s most celebrated arias).
The musical friction generated is never less than entertaining but there are times when the live singing veers towards the sobs and sighs of West End musicals. Nor is the production as transgressive as you might hope, its ending seeming tame when set beside the original. Queer? Maybe not enough.
Until tomorrow (020 7503 1646, arcolatheatre.com)
