Shtumming the spiel

London may cry foul over Hamlet’s misplaced to-be-ing and not-to-be-ing but Edinburgh is in raptures over a Magic Flute which ditches its spoken dialogue entirely. Directed by Barrie Kosky and Suzanne Andrade, and first seen a couple of years ago on Kosky’s adopted home turf at the Berlin Comic Opera, the production turns Mozart and Schikaneder’s beloved singspiel into a sing-stumm, in which silent-movie captions and moon-faced gazes replace the original spiel, underscored by fortepiano improvisations with a spot of Chinese opera thrown in for good measure.

Not your usual night at the opera, then, but it certainly drove the Festival Theatre audience wild. The visual style mixes up Buster Keaton, F.W. Murnau and Monty Python, with the action dominated by slick animation sequences projected on a drop screen in which cut-outs revolve to reveal the live singers on promontories of varying precariousness. The opera’s first number finds Tamino’s torso swaying atop projected running legs.