Classical

CANDIDE Coliseum LONDON ****

Half a century after being eviscerated by its producers and misunderstood by its audiences, Leonard Bernstein's Candide has Robert Carsen and Ian Burton to thank for its sharpest and most flamboyant reincarnation yet. It isn't perfect; a pithy novella still should not a long-winded musical make. But it makes Voltaire's satire at once more immediate and relevant than Lillian Hellman and Bernstein originally did, and it revels in one of the most original scores ever written for Broadway.

Michael Levine's stunning set takes us deep inside the cathode ray tube of a gigantic TV set, circa 1956. Even as Bernstein's racy overture is establishing the crazy, slap-dash style of Voltaire's narrative, Carsen is dropping us into Fifties America with a series of film images (courtesy of "Volt Air") depicting an age of hopefulness and optimism. Our journey - and Candide's - in search of the American dream has begun.

Candide's tutor Dr Pangloss becomes, as a re-embodiment of Voltaire, our master of ceremonies. The brilliant Alex Jennings slips nonchalantly between the two - not to mention Pangloss's alter ego, the cynic Martin, whose belief in "the worst of all possible worlds" achieves greater resonance with his bitter song "Words, Words, Words".

But the real kicker is that Bernstein and Hellman's original point of departure - McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee (a tempting parallel with the Spanish Inquisition) - is no longer merely implicit. This latter-day auto-da-fe comes replete with a jolly chorus line of Ku Klux Klan. And it sets the scene for what is now more explicitly an essay on the corrosion of the American dream, the death of optimism.

Cunegonde's classic "Glitter and Be Gay" is now an obvious homage to Marilyn's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", pointing up the way the system prostitutes its stars. Anna Christy is disappointing in that number; I know it's asking a lot, but it takes a star to play a star. Toby Spence certainly proved himself to be one, charting Candide's odyssey from innocence to disillusionment while sweetly voicing Bernstein's most beautiful ballads. And Beverley Klein does a corking turn as the Old Lady of "mysterious origins". Rumon Gamba does the sensational score proud, right through to that final, glorious anthem of unfettered optimism, "Make Our Garden Grow".

To 12 July (020-7632 8300)

Copyright c 2008 Independent Newspapers UK Limited. All rights owned or operated by The Independent.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.