FringeReview UK 2026
The Magic Flute
OrQuesta Ensemble
Genre: Adaptation, classical, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Fringe Theatre, International, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Opera and Operatic Theatre, Theatre, Translation
Venue: Grimeborn, Arcola Theatre, Dalston, Studio 1
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Mozart’s The Magic Flute is strictly bonkers. But for Ensemble OrQuesta to bring a cast of 17, nearly all singing along with six children to Studio 1 of the Arcola in the Grimeborn Festival, with members of the Hastings Philharmonic breaks their own record. Except when they did it in 2019. Conducted by stage/music director Marcio da Silva, it plays at Studio 1 till August 29. On some evenings it’s conducted by Kieran Staub.
OrQuesta provide the pattern of how to mount a vocally full-scale, full-length opera in an intimate space. An outstanding Magic Flute.
Review
This is bonkers. Mozart’s The Magic Flute is strictly bonkers. But for Ensemble OrQuesta to bring a cast of 17, nearly all singing along with six children to Studio 1 of the Arcola in the Grimeborn Festival, with members of the Hastings Philharmonic breaks their own record. Except when they did it in 2019. Conducted by stage/music director Marcio da Silva, it plays at Studio 1 till August 29. On some evenings it’s conducted by Kieran Staub.
It’s a full production, no discernible cuts and lasts over two hours and 50 minutes. Sung mainly in German there’s passages sung in English and all the dialogue is in English too. It’s racy and contemporary. Prince Pamino is asked by Papageno if he comes from as far as Camden. Or even Chelsea. The sung German translation seems by contrast exquisitely Victorian and in rhyme. Possibly the reason it was adopted, out of copyright or into a sly dig at masonic archaisms. Surtitles incidentally are the clearest and largest I’ve seen at Grimeborn this year. They never distract, but deliver.
Last year OrQuesta brought a very fine Don Giovanni, and this year – only two weeks ago – an equally fine Dido and Aeneas. This production however goes beyond. And puts into the shade a delightful Cosi fan Tutte last month.
It begins and ends in a late summer’s dream, with a Yin/Yang design swirling the stage floor. John Twichen’s Tamino examines a box. It’s a transistor radio and ultimately not his but his male companion’s. He’s assailed by something slithery and rescued by a chorus of three Ladies. And so this superbly shadowed and often candlelit production arises from a solemn Tenebrae into full glare.
Though the lighting seems in-house it’s extremely well thought-through and the processions with candles for instance would grace any operatic stage. Costumes too are respectful to the period. There’s an unfussy full regalia. Masonic and traditionally-founded without gimmicks.
The Hastings Philharmonic ensemble are lively from the overture onwards. Indeed they only get activated after some curious solemn E flat masonic chords from the transistor. Then they present the real thing. The joy of this production is its pointing up such motifs so you really hear those three chords ripple through the orchestral and vocal fabric. There’s enormous fun too with motifs of the magic flute itself given to Tamino; or the equally magic bells Papageno deploys (that transistor).
Twitchen makes a fine Tamino, presenting a noble front to those ladies (Rosemary Carlton-Willis, Jordan Gascoigne, Juliet Telford, all first-rate as they lust over the prone Prince; they double as Temple initiates too). Twitchen also presents a genuinely conflicted Tamino. Most of all though he conveys a vocal clarity and embodied stoicism that seem to predestine him for the Temple.
Flavio Lauria draws all the laughs as Papageno and gets the lion’s share of one-liners in the spoken dialogue. He also sings with natural comedic brio. There’s more than a touch of Leporello about him. One of his finest moments – and it almost persuades you they’re picking the wrong people – is his duet with Pamina, searching for love. That’s beautifully rendered.
Bass Vedat Dalgiran’s Sarastro hefts the right dignity and warmth. His burnished solemnity instils the right stillness too. One forgets quite how much silence and stillness is enjoined in this opera; so it’s good its fount leads by example.
Dalgiran’s a contrast to the more lean bass-baritone of First Wise Man John Rycroft, along with Neville Kuyt and Jonathan Todd in similar roles. They’re joined by Jay Rockwell, Paul Jenkins (one of those also in the Dido and Aeneas) and Robin Kuyt. Predrag Costa’s treacherous Monostatos skirls his bass into an almost Wagnerian villainy.
The stars though have to be the mother and daughter. Juliet Petrus only has two arias but is unforgettable. Her second rightly garnered the ovation of the night. Her gleaming top-notes are not only clear and bell-like in those famous stabbing Fs; but articulated with separation, they never seem merely secco or over-dry. Most of all though Petrus seethes with a wronged and vengeful tone. Something close to the vengeance of Monostatos but infinitely deeper and refined.
Helen May (who alternates with Anna-Luise Wagner on some nights) is the revelation though. She makes Pamina something more than a willing wilting wanna-wife. A soaring lyric soprano, May scorches the heavens without having to go through purgatorial fires. Though her character naturally does that too. There’s tragic passion here and you sense she’s not too far from Donna Anna and Donna Elvira, or from several roles in the exactly contemporary Clemenza di Tito. Like Twitchen there’s more than a touch of tragic dignity. May is also production manager.
Jazmin Kirsch-Veszeli’s Papagena is all too brief but truly makes her mark with the vivid coloratura and dotted rhythms to answer Lauria’s Papageno that we see elsewhere only in the Queen if the Night. Here though they’re comic and the soubrette role has finally got her man.
There’s roles too for actor and stage manager Marjorie Lemos, and the three HPO Songbirds and three puppets (managed by Orlando Bishop). In addition six non-speaking roles swelled the stage: Alfie Alun Hughes, Antonio Ulucan da Silva, Artur Rebelo, Christopher Madden, Florence Milton, Lara Ulucan da Silva.
If the first two of the greatest four Mozart operas (The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni) lean into a slightly pro-feminist critique of men, it has to be admitted that Da Ponte’s own confection when let loose from others’ fictions – Cosi fan Tutte – and this folk theatre commission with Emanuel Schikaneder for The Magic Flute – plummet into some misogyny. Admittedly operas either side of these – The Escape From the Seraglio and Clemenza – also feature benign despots; though not so much emphasis on “proper” bounds.
Mozart it must be admitted usually worked with what he had to hand; after examining whether it worked dramatically.
Still, Sarastro prevails; not the Queen of the Night or her ladies (who seems to like truthfulness). And Sarastro and his Masonic cult sing too of women not overstepping their allotted sphere.
Nevertheless the dignity of the conception is never guyed – essential in such a tonally disparate piece. The four greatest operas alternates comic with serious too, and this like Don Giovanni twists comedy from tragic moments, and visa-versa. Unlike that opera though it has no through-pull into damnation. A tone must be struck beyond the masonic E flat. OrQuesta manages this consummately.
This is a production that can offer a straight reading without needing the cloak of concept opera to hide its naked resources. Admittedly they’re hardly naked. This is an extraordinary thought-through production punching way above weight in an intimate space. OrQuesta provide the pattern of how to mount a vocally full-scale, full-length opera in an intimate space. An outstanding Magic Flute.
Supported by The Marchus Trust, Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra.
