DON GIOVANNI

17/11/10, ENO

3 hrs 10 mins. Superfluous Smoking alert.

This is the third Don Giovanni we've seen (after Don John at BAC and Glyndebourne in the summer) to make Leporello (Brindley Sherratt) a sleazy character with a camera and his list aria into a slide show of Don Giovanni's conquests. Though this version, in Jeremy Sams' exceedingly witty translation, turned the list not into a collection of countries but into a kind of month-by-month sales report ("March to April, 102") complete with bar charts and a gag about a "spreadsheet".

And it's the second (after Glyndebourne) to turn the Commendatore into a zombie emerging from the grave (though ENO's Commendatore was neither as frightening nor as well acted and sung as Glyndebourne's).

But some things about this production were different. I think the order of the numbers in Act 2 was changed so that Don Giovanni's little mandolin aria was no longer sung looking up at Donna Elvira's window but instead became a soliloquy, a reflection on some kind of ideal woman for whom the Don has been searching all his life, a video of her eyes projected onto the set as he sang... which helped provide him with a motive.

Indeed one of the strengths of this production (by Rufus Norris) was the care given to supplying motivation for the characters and the psychological truth of much of the action. At Glyndebourne Zerlina's switch from flirtation to crying rape seemed arbitrary; here it made sense (she was flattered by the Don's interest, then he got her drunk, then she realised what was happening). And her teasing aria to the injured Mazeppo (all about dealing with his "swellings") was again wittily done and beautifully delivered by Sarah Tynan (we've seen her at this address in The Elixir of Love and Jephtha).

But the strengths were undermined by some curious directorial decisions of which the first was the set, a constantly moving set of angular walls and windows and staircases round, through and over which the principals scrambled while they (the walls etc) were wheeled around the stage by stagehands dressed in red and yellow Hallowe'en masks and sweatshirts. Cleverly choreographed, but really annoying and not always helpful.

And there was a very odd St Vitus dance during the second act sextet when they all realise Leporello has duped them: Donna Anna (Katherine Broderick, once a diminutive ENO Brunnhilde, though she's filled out hugely since, alas) did an Irish dance; Don Ottavio (Robert Murray, rather good) took his clothes off to his underwear; Zerlina twisted herself into agonised attitudes. What was all that about? None of us knew.

Don Ottavio had a first act aria I don't recall from the Glyndebourne production, which made him rather less of a cypher and rather more of a proper character. And Mazeppo too (John Molloy) seemed in this production to be taken rather more seriously.

Iain Patterson commanding as the Don; Rebecca Stevens ill and substituted by Sarah Someone who did well. But we had a feeling that, like Rupert Goold the other day with Turandot, this was a case of a tyro opera director who didn't trust the material sufficiently and packed the production with unnecessary business.

The costumes suggested some time in the 1960s. Mazeppo wore a shiny suit and a teddy boy's quiff, Zerlina a white dress with exaggerated pencil skirt and blue polka dots, Leporello a tie and dirty raincoat, Donna Elvira a black dress and Donna Anna a red two piece suit.

The Superfluous Smoking came during the overture when the Don appeared in dumbshow, handed his cigarette to Leporello and then raped a woman his Hallowe'en costume-clad henchmen had caught, before nicking her bright green coat and a wig and putting them on, making him look (briefly) like an 18th century aristo.

DON GIOVANNI

31/7/10, Glyndebourne

The night of the bats. There was one flying round the auditorium when we entered which remained throughout the first act, flitting occasionally across the lights and adding considerably to the atmosphere. And when we got back to our (rather grand) B & B there was another flitting around in the hallway and landing which the landlady's son finally got rid of with the aid of a gigantic butterfly net.

The production itself was rather dominated by its set, an extravagant affair of hydraulics and walls (which became sloping playing areas) all turning on the revolve, which caught fire at the end of Act 1. Designed by Paul Brown. Surely, one thought, they cannot take that on tour but apparently they will. Though undeniably impressive it often gave the singers difficulty and limited movement.

Directed by Jonathan Kent, who chose to reimagine the Commendatore as a kind of B movie zombie (which worked well enough) but otherwise played this rather puzzling piece pretty straight.

The setting was 1960s Italy, Fellini-style. Luca Pisaroni was an engaging comic Leporello, played as a rather cringing character (though some of his music suggests a rather more self-confident character), a seedy paparazzo-style figure with a Polaroid camera (cf the version we saw at BAC a year or so ago). Gerald Finley sang his umpteenth Don Giovanni, looking a dead ringer for Marcello Mastroianni. It occurred to me that he doesn't have as much to do as you might expect: Leporello has more stage time.

Kate Royal (sigh) sang Donna Elvira in a belted raincoat: there is something gawkily restrained and rather English about her which suited the slightly loopy Elvira.

Anna Samuil as Donna Anna got the biggest cheers, which made me wonder who the star is meant to be. Donna A and Donna E have one big aria apiece in the second half. Zerlina (Anna Virovlansky) has more to sing and do: she was a sparky little thing in a ghastly blonde wig. Presumably Mozart's original cast included a first-rate omic actress who got the Zerlina-Susannah parts and a couple of stand-and-belters who couldn't act. Masetto (in shiny wedding suit) and Don Ottavio are rather thankless parts.

The plot really is very problematic. It relies on all the women being in two minds, up for it but then again not up for it (or instantly regretting it). Donna Anna's screams at the start in this production are not because Giovanni is raping her but because he's leaving and refuses to stay. Zerlina succumbs (in a nice touch when she and Don G first meet and she is easily seduced her high note comesas he runs his hand up her skirt) and willingly goes off in the party scene (another touch of Fellini, with everyone moving very slowly in a kind of three a.m. torpor) only to cry rape off-stage. It's not clear why.

You're left wondering what on earth all these women actually see in him. And you feel if women were as changeable and unreliable as this plot suggestsm Don G would have come a crashing cropper long, long ago.

At one point the party band (and chorus) went to the back of the circle, invisible from our seats, and created an intriguing stereo effect which was only partly spoilt by the fact that the party itself was very distinctly taking place on stage in front of us, not behind us.

I liked the quote from Figaro, and Leporello's "I know this".

David Hockney was sitting immediately in front of us. Norman Lamont was there with a tall and striking blode. Danielle de Niese was at the dinner but not, so far as I could see, at the show.

DON JOHN

9/5/09, BAC

2 hrs 30 mins. Kneehigh's latest, a version of Don Giovanni set in England in 1978 (for some unfathomable reason).

It was pretty close to the opera but with much less interesting music, mostly nondescript rock from a band stage left whose members occasionally joined in as actors. The only tune that survived from Mozart's version was the lute serenade, for which three members of the band unplugged and came downstage to play, kneeling coyly, on a ukelele, a guitar and a (plucked) cello. Very neat.

There was a towering set of freight containers, with Don John and his mate, a sleazy photographer with a Polaroid camera (character's name forgotten, but played by Kneehigh founder Mike Shepherd, he of the hooked nose and cheeky presence, in a frightful seventies wig) sitting high up on deckchairs and clambering up and down on ladders.

It was done in what must be the biggest hall in BAC, with a dazzling array of entrances and exits, through the audience, down from on high etc etc, with the usual Kneehigh quick changes and doubling.

Most of the interiors were set in a large container, which was wheeled centre stage and back to the side as needed, rather cumbersomely, and its front and sides let down to reveal actors who'd entered by a door at the back, out of sight of the audience. Containers higher up represented a church and a hotel room.

There was some clever updating. Leporello's counting aria in this version became a song in which he recounted the legions of women DJ had seduced over a slide show of pictures of 70s lovelies.

Gisli Orn Gardarsson was DJ: a handsome presence but we felt not quite emphatic enough. As with many attempts to put charismatic figures on stage (Lulu is another) it's difficult to get across exactly what the other characters find so magnetic about them if the actor lacks sufficient heft. And if they don't have that heft the whole thing seems a bit pointless. One's not clear where one's sympathies should lie. In this production it lay mainly with the Commendatore's daughter, whose deep unhappiness and ineffectual vicar husband made her easy prey for the Don.

There were several moments of vigorous simulated intercourse, during which DJ would enthusiastically remove the woman's knickers... revealing a second pair of knickers underneath.

One of the best things about the show were the four dancers, in pitch-perfect 70s tank tops and hair do's: Pan's People in mufti. They were so good I assumed they must be 70s revival specialists, drafted in just for this production, but it turns out they're an all-purpose dance troupe based in Plymouth (I think the programmes said) with whom Kneehigh have worked on several previous productions. From time to time they were joined by a fifth, rather diminutive girl who may have been an understudy (since this was the last night at this address).

Our enthusiasm may have been increased by proximity: we were in the second or third row. A and S and Dr T, who were a few rows further back, were less enthralled.

The Guardian's round-up of reviews when the production was first seen at Stratford in December is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/dec/22/don-john-kneehigh-stratford-reviews