Before a light goes on or a note is heard in Mid-Wales Opera's new production, resonant snoring establishes that – whatever he believes – Sir John Falstaff's attractions as a bedfellow are nil. This gets a laugh and sets the tenor of Martin Lloyd-Evans's jolly but observant production. There aren't that many belly laughs, though, partly because Charles Johnston, as Falstaff, doesn't sport the customary voluminous prosthetic. In fact, his rotund stomach is created before our eyes: having helped Falstaff consume an enormous lunch, Pistol and Bardulph pack away the giant tablecloth by stuffing it under his shirt. This moment typifies the company's inventive approach to cost-cutting.
Lloyd-Evans sets Verdi's comedy in the present day, with Ford in blazer and slacks, and Pistol as a slicked-back teddy boy. As befits Verdi and Boïto's take on The Merry Wives of Windsor, it's the women's machinations against Falstaff and Ford, the determination to prick their pomposity, that entertain. Lee Bisset's Alice sounds more comfortable than she looks (she's wearing a puffball-skirted dress, a pun on Falstaff's traditional pumpkin breeches), while Gaynor Keeble's Mistress Quickly is a rich-toned caricature.
Borrowing the puppetry that's usually the trademark of the director Richard Jones, the final scene at Herne's oak has ghouls and spirits as well as a wedding-cake tableau, lending a final element of spectacle to an otherwise necessarily thin, pack-in-a-van concept. In his debut as MWO's artistic director, Nicholas Cleobury ensures a lively pace throughout, with Johnston's Falstaff and Wyn Pencarreg's Ford vividly characterised and making the most of Amanda Holden's witty translation.
