Mirandolina is most blokes' ideal woman - sexy, rich, single and in charge of her own pub. Little wonder the heroine of Carlo Goldoni's play is permanently besieged by a posse of besotted suitors. "I'm lovely and they love me," she trills in Ranjit Bolt's pithy new translation. "It's a nuisance but what can you do?"
Goldoni is one of those writers whose plays often seem funnier by repute than in performance. Yet Bolt's treatment delivers something approaching plausible human behaviour.
The credibility is further enhanced by director Jonathan Munby's decision to update the action to fascist-era Italy. It sounds contrived, but it's worth remembering that Mussolini called for women to "return to the domestic hearth as queen and signora".
There's more than a hint of the Duce in Ian Bartholomew's smooth-pated Count Albafiorita, a thuggish vulgarian who has purchased his title, and struts around in a manner suggesting that Mussolini was little more than a slightly sinister Pantaloon figure ascended to political office.
He's well-matched by Nicholas Boulton as an impecunious aristocrat, and Michael Condron as a sardonically observant servant. Matthew Kelly turns in a rollicking performance as the biggest booby of all: a sour, rumpled misogynist whose grizzled hair and endless legs give him the aspect of an old mop wrung out to dry.
There's such ebullience in these performances that Raquel Cassidy's Mirandolina is in danger of appearing slightly subdued. She glows pleasantly enough, yet doesn't quite radiate the charisma to explain what all the fuss is about. Still, it's usually the quiet ones who hold the most surprises.
· Until August 5. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
