The Bartered Bride review – charm and wit in assured English village staging

Garsington Opera at Wormsley, Stokenchurch
Director Paul Curran transfers Smetana’s comic masterpiece to 1950s England to create an irresistibly energetic production

A generation ago, Smetana’s comic masterpiece could still be billed as the quintessential Czech opera. But that bohemian folksiness is dated now, and the idea of selling a bride – though it never quite happens in the opera – is more than unsettling. Garsington Opera’s season opens with a winning production by Paul Curran that moves the action from a 19th-century Czech village to 1950s England. The charm and folksiness survive even though there’s not a Moravian knee boot, an embroidered headdress or a puffed sleeve in sight. Instead, the first act takes place in a village hall, the second in a pub and the third in the travelling circus. But in such an English setting it seems perverse to preserve the original language rather than perform a translation.

Curran’s staging, in Kevin Knight’s busy naturalistic sets, is continuously assured and full of witty touches. At the start, the vicar puts an LP on his Dansette record player, cueing Smetana’s scurrying overture. The drinking chorus in praise of beer leads to a stream of visits to the gents’ loo. The heroine Mařenka dances the polka in a polka dot dress. And when the circus arrives at the beginning of act three, the acrobatic exuberance and tricks have an irresistible theatrical impact. Even Mařenka gamely celebrates with a cartwheel at the end.

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