Descent into hell: Opera Zuid's madcap Orpheus in the Underworld

It’s hot as hell this week in the Netherlands, so thank the gods of air conditioning as Opera Zuid serve up Offenbach’s madcap casserole of diabolical delights, Orphée aux enfers. There’s nothing remotely sensible anyone can write about this romp française through classical antiquity, suffice to say that the show that originally bridged the cultural gulf between the Palais Garnier and the Folies Bergères cannot fail to delight any contemporary audience with a pulse. Every now and again someone claims to be making the whole ridiculous spectacle ‘relevant’ – this time it’s Benjamin Prins sneaking some lines about “fake news made up by journalists” into his witty updating of the Crémieux/Halévy libretto – but honestly: go analyse a sandwich. 

Marrit van der Burgt and Pilo Pikes – costumes and wigs respectively – have had a ball. One of the chorus has an enormous blue head, while Public Opinion (in a not in the least understated performance by Thomas Morris) is pitch perfect in sparkles as Rotary-wife-at-a-function. There are S&M lady satyrs (tutus in place of the usual appendage) in sheep's clothing. The gods hang around on designers Marloes en Wikke’s peachy powder puff Olympus until they hear that Pluto serves gin and tonic and set off en masse to the neon-lit nightclub at the end of the universe, Hell Yeah.

There’s a lot going on and it’s fairly silly, but there’s still room for it to get a lot sillier. Offenbach wrote a great deal more music for this bouffe-cum-burlesque than just the vocal numbers and, although Willy Laury has created a sheep ballet and later on something similar for the satyrettes, there’s a sense that Prins feels he has to hold up the story while he waits for the words to come round again. All this makes for a sense of disjointedness to many of the jokes and some curious moments of playing the libretto straight. When Cupid – a winsome Sophie Collin – comes in late after a night out and sings “Mystery shrouds my return” it’s a comic opportunity missed. When Venus (Marina Ruiz, not to be underused) and Apollo (Tom Jansen) repeat the lines, that’s two more. Wit needs even spreading if we’re to enjoy it to the full.

But for any dry areas there are pockets of jam elsewhere. Anna Emelianova’s commanding Diana gives Acteon CPR and Francis van Broekhuizen almost steals the show as the Juno who’s seen it all (which she has, of course). Her wandering husband (and the ebullient Roger Smeets does oddly resemble Stanley Johnson in that hat) has disguised himself as anything and everything from a cat to a cloud the better to assuage his relentless sexual appetite. Even the family are laughing at him for overcomplicating things. One day Juno will sit him down and tell him all he has to do is to take the bins out.

And what about the ill-fated lovers that set this cavalcade of craziness in train? Amel Brahim-Djelloul’s perky Eurydice has buckets of pastoral charm and all the athletic agility to power her through the vocal pyrotechnics of the third act. Mathys Lagier as the titular musician nobody should go out with is exuberant in his romantic self-absorption.

A touring show, for the fraction of the budget of say, Emma Rice’s at ENO in 2019, Opera Zuid’s may not be the definitive Orpheus of recent years: that accolade must surely go to Spymonkey at the Vienna Volksoper – a show so bananas Offenbach would have died all over again just to watch it from the wings. But for anyone whose idea of a good time when it’s 30 degrees outside is to descend into hell and do the cancan, this one may prove pure ambrosia.