I attended the first of three performances. The Park-Hanmer version is considerably changed from Offenbach's original. Fortunately, they did include Styx's song, which is only printed in the appendix. My main overall impression was that the production was not ready. Many of the cast did not remember their lines, and in some cases even the words of their songs. The voice of the prompter was often heard loud and clear where I was sitting, in the front row. The Eurydice, Pat Giles, was excellent, the best performer in the show. She knew her part, sang with a lovely voice, and acted well. Pluto, Ernest Sexton, was also very good; a good strong voice, and quite funny, though he appeared to be nervous at the beginning. In the short role of Styx, John Gamble looked and acted the part superbly. If he had only memorized the words of his song it would have been a great performance. For a Professor of music, Orpheus (Keith Davies) did not have a very good voice. Calliope (Muriel Codling) acted the part well and did not have much to sing. The scenery and costumes were very well done and, in some cases, ingenious. I particularly liked the underground train that the Olympians used to get to Hades, and the fact that Juno and Calliope in the third act [sic] wore the same dress, which caused them to glare at each other [These ideas were of course, pinched from the ENO production, but the meeting there of Juno & Calliope occurs in Act 2. Ed.] The orchestra was fine. There were about six or seven excellent dancers. They did a fine can-can, which I especially appreciated because, in the otherwise excellent ENO production, they did not do the can-can, but instead some other dance - to the most famous can-can music ever written. JERRY MARCH [Report abridged].

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