Cast:
The Old Woman/Queen of Eldorado ROSEMARY ASHE
Voltaire 2/Bavarian Captain/Grand Inquisitor/Vanderdendur/First ghostly King PAUL FEATHERSTONE
Voltaire 3/The Baron/Innkeeper/King of Bavaria/Inquisitor/King of Eldorado/Martin/Second ghostly King JOHN GRIFFITHS
Minister’s wife/Citizen of Eldorado BETHANY H-HALLETT
Candide DAVID HORTON
Maximilian/Don Isaacar/Citizen of Eldorado CHRIS JENKINS
Voltaire 1/Pangloss/Third ghostly King CARL SANDERSON
Cunegonde PAULA SIDES
Voltaire 4/Bavarian Corporal/Minister/Inquisitor/Citizen of Eldorado/Captain of prison ship/ Fourth ghostly King MATTHEW SIVETER
Nurse/Sheep BRYONY SOOTHILL
James the Anabaptist/Governor of Montevideo/Slave/Fifth ghostly King PETER VAN HULLE
Cacambo ELIA LO TAURO
Paquette CLARE WATKINS
Governor’s Adjutant/Ensemble/Sheep/Sixth ghostly King GUY WITHERS
Production team:
Director JEFF CLARKE
Conductor OLIVER GOOCH
Set Designs JEFF CLARKE & ELROY ASHMORE
Costume Design WANDA D’ONOFRIO
Lighting Design MATT CATER
Choreographer JENNY ARNOLD
Assistant Director REBECCA MELTZER
Assistant Conductor MICHAEL WALDRON
Production Manager SHAZ McGEE
Stage Manager EDWARD SALT
Assistant Stage Manager EMILY MELVILLE-BROWN
Wardrobe Supervisor AMY JESKINS
Wardrobe Mistress ANNA DIXON
“This production was brilliantly inventive and witty, bubbling with lunatic optimism, a happy meeting of the philosophical minds of the director Jeff Clarke and Voltaire, or at least his eponymous hero. The ingenuity of the staging cannot be overstated, successive transformations seemingly engineered almost instantaneously, with the essence of each location summed up in zany but precise design.”
Rian Evans OPERA
☆☆☆☆☆ “I can’t fault Clarke’s absolutely super staging. By dint of resourceful theatrical imagination he has managed to produce a witty, lavishly costumed spectacle on a shoe-string, and although the overall length may be an issue, each of the 23 individual epsidoes is immaculately paced and sharply characterised, with due weight given to the darker moments.”
Ruper Christiansen THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
☆☆☆☆ “Candide can be a chain of episodes, but here was a real story, powered by human energy and theatrical imagination. It zipped along, blossoming into the songs, dances and ensembles that Bernstein plundered from European musical history. It genuinely deserves a longer life. It could handily be cut here and there, but it comes the closest I’ve ever seen to finding the complicated opera-meets-musical heart of this best of all possible shows.”
Robert Thicknesse OPERA NOW
