THE PERMANENT signs at Loughcrew House and Gardens in Co Meath advertise an adventure course, a coffee shop, and walks. Decadence and deceit however were on offer last weekend when Loughcrew Garden Opera took to its tiny tented stage again.
The new Loughcrew production of Johann Strauss's fabulously tuneful operetta Die Fledermaushad a difficult gestation, with cast members dropping out at an alarming rate.
First to go, and a great shame it was too, was comedian Katherine Lynch, hired for the normally male-speaking role of the jailer, Frosch. She surely had a better chance than most of rivalling Frank Kelly’s memorable turn for Opera Ireland in the late 1990s. Dómhnall O’Donoghue took his chances with a line of mammy shtick.
Cork soprano Cara O’Sullivan bowed out as Rosalinde with a throat problem, her place taken at short notice by the experienced Cornish singer Naomi Harvey. And another singer had fallen by the time the show started, with the director, former Celtic Tenor Niall Morris, standing in at the last minute for Alex Otterburn (struck down with glandular fever) as prison director Frank.
And, as if the gods hadn’t frowned enough on Friday’s opening night, the heavens opened a couple of times during the performance to rattle the tent with rain.
The audience, encouraged to dress up for the evening, took it all in good spirit. The pre-performance festivities – I spotted one man with a top hat – and the outdoor suppers on the lawn all escaped the rain.
Morris’s production set out to pose the question of what were the Napers of Loughcrew House up to in the 1930s? The answer he gave was that they indulged in the same kind of cheating, drinking and lying as Strauss’s wealthy partygoers in 1874.
Even the bad weather had its upsides. During the interval, the wet fields nearby collected a mist that brought an air of Gothic mystery. Everyone also had memories of the free-flying singing of Claudia Boyle as the maid Adele, and Imelda Drumm as the imperiously bored Prince Orlofsky to take home with them.
