A lively and imaginative interpretation of an indestructible Britten opera

Scottish Opera’s new production of Albert Herring updates the action to 1990, and hey – remember 1990? No, not particularly, and I suspect that’ll be a common reaction if you were actually around back then. The director Daisy Evans was a toddler at the time and she imagines a gaudy, tawdry small-town world of bum-bags, WeightWatchers and decrepit gas heaters. Loxford Village Hall looks like it hasn’t been redecorated since the year the opera was composed, 1947, and that certainly rings true. Blancmange for the May Day feast, though? I’m pretty sure that even under John Major, blancmange was a throwback. But Evans has a show to put on after all, and a pink wobbling gelatine-based dessert is more theatrical than a bowl of Monster Munch.

One minute you’re cheering the fall of the Berlin Wall, next you’re a younger generation’s idea of retro-kitsch

Still, that’s how it goes. One minute you’re cheering the fall of the Berlin Wall, next thing you’re a younger generation’s idea of hilarious retro-kitsch. Is anything gained by setting Albert Herring in the 1990s, as opposed to the period of composition or even (imagine!) the late Victorian England that Britten and his librettist Eric Crozier actually specified? Not really, but Britten’s score is pretty much indestructible and Evans’s direction is so lively and imaginative that it disarms almost all misgivings.

The cast, too, is notably fresh (several of the singers are members of Scottish Opera’s Emerging Artist programme), and as Lady Billows, Susan Bullock bounces the younger characters’ energy straight back at them – trilling out her edicts to the community, and dropping to a throaty Mrs Thatcher gurgle when a touch of steel is required. I quite liked the idea of Sid (Ross Cumming) as the bloke who runs the local meat raffle, and with his novelty waistcoat and taste for the spotlight, Francis Church’s Mr Gedge is a grimly recognisable C of E vicar.