Although based in rural Cheshire, Clonter Opera has brought its production of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro to London's Britten Theatre, an intimate venue in the heart of the Royal College of Music. These performances represent a return to home ground for several of the principals who once studied here. In this performance, they used the theatre's warm acoustic to ensure that much of Amanda Holden's witty translation came over clearly and crisply. The orchestra comprised only 10 players; with single players on all the parts, the string players were performing as soloists lines intended for a blended body of musicians. In places the result was slightly ragged, but the orchestra played spiritedly, despite the slow tempos set by conductor Michael Rosewell.

Even so, the cast responded well to Rosewell, and there were good performances, including James Cleverton's Figaro and Michael Dewis's Count. Sally McHugh, as the Countess, rarely relaxed vocally or physically, but Marie Arnet was a polished and engaging Susanna.

There was strength, too, in the smaller roles, from tenor Robert Murray, in the dual role of Basilio and Don Curzio, and especially from Jonathan Lemalu, whose pit-stop costume changes allowed him to sing both Bartolo and Antonio. As the latter, his bumpkin-gardener accent travelled all over southern England; but as the former he grabbed the attention. The problems with this production were largely in its direction by Geoffrey Saunders: he tried too hard to provide an alternative staging. Having Basilio engineer the discovery of the hidden pageboy Cherubino, rather than have the Count pull the dustsheet away, unwittingly to reveal the boy, blunted the edge of a sharp visual joke.