Production director Daisy Evans welcomes her audience to Così fan tutte set in October 1943 in Sicily. The set (designed by Katharine Heath) is intriguing, with three propellers along the back wall of the performance space and a small stage at the side set up for an Ensa troupe. However, concerns about the pitfalls of “concept” productions were confirmed from the start.
We are in a small Cotswold market town in 1810. It's the height of the Napoleonic wars, fear of Bonapartist spies abounds. A stranger rolls into town - a roving man whose profession is rounding up wild horses for the military - and wins the hand of the daughter of the town Constable in a bare knuckle prize fight. Somehow, you just know that there's going to be trouble.
