Powder Her Face: Amanda Roocroft would never give a random bell-boy a blowjob

Before we talk fellatio, let me get the boring, snide observations out of the way. It’s great to see the ENO experimenting with space etc – exploring ‘new’ venues, going outside their comfort zone blah, blah, blah – but they really need to do better than this.

Ambika P3 is a fantastic industrial box in the middle of Marylebone (where they made the concrete to build the Westway). It’s not as undiscovered as the ENO like to think it is (it’s been around for nearly a decade) but still, good on them for finally realising it’s here.

For them to then ignore the glories that the space has to offer in its unadulterated state and plonk a theatre in it (as they did last night for their new production of Powder Her Face) is not just spatially illiterate but also madly wasteful. To compound this they programmed an opera that has no interest whatsoever in being taken on an industrial jaunt.