The Elixir of Love review: Bawdy, sparky Gilbert and Sullivan for the 21st century

Donizetti often set his operas in locations – Liverpool, the Caribbean, Scotland – that 19th century Italian audiences would find exotic. I don’t think he ever used Barry Island, the South Wales seaside resort, but he has now, thanks to Hannah Noone’s new production of The Elixir of Love.

The opera comes in for some rough treatment: the plot is truncated, the orchestra is just a piano, there are only five roles and the new translation, by Chris Harris and David Eaton, is cheerfully vulgar. It’s merciless but mightily effective. ​

The opera opens in Adina’s Café; it’s 1982, so there’s a Tom Jones photo on the wall alongside notices offering Sew and Chat sessions. Nice but dim Nicky (Nemorino in the original) is besotted with Adina, but she is smitten by Brandon, a hunky sailor soon to be shipped off to the Falklands War.

Keen to woo Adina, Nicky buys some dodgy love potions from Dulcamara, who, in Matthew Kellett’s energetic performance, becomes an oleaginous travelling con man and master of “the art of the deal”: you get the picture. ​

Needless to say, everything turns out right in the end. The young voices are pleasingly light and bright and the singers clearly enjoy chewing on the expletives.

The intimacy of the theatre allows them to make every facial tic and twitch count, a bonus that conventional opera houses can’t offer. The result is a bawdy, sparky operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan for the 21st century, perhaps.​

Until October 26 (0207 226 8561, kingsheadtheatre.com)​