Candide - TNT

Not content with the contributions that Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Parker and a host of others have made to Leonard Bernstein's comic operetta since it premiered in 1956, director Richard Carsen has taken all sorts of liberties with his updated staging. Inspired by 18th century philosopher Voltaire's satirical novella, Candide follows the adventures of the eponymous hero (Toby Spence) as he travels the world experiencing loss, tragedy, war and a multitude of other ills in his search for "the best of all possible worlds."
This colourful new production (which has already been seen in Paris and Milan) turns the stage into a giant television set with Voltaire at the controls. But what he's watching is a parody of 50's America, with Candide's beloved Cunegonde (Anna Christy) resurrected as a Marilyn Monroe clone (dripping with diamonds, curvaceous in pink satin) when she survives rape and disembowelment in her native West Failure (originally Westphalia) and travels to the New World.
The words are witty, the melodic score both catchy and haunting. It's all a bit too busy, perhaps, and logistically muddled, but great fun if you just let yourself go with the overblown lack of restraint. Alex Jennings doubles brilliantly as an arch Voltaire and the tutor Pangloss, stubbornly maintaining that everything happens for the best, whilst Beverley Klein is a scene-stealing, one-buttocked old lady, and 'Tony Blair' floats nonchalantly on an oil-slicked sea in Union Jack swimming trunks — along with Bush, Chirac and Putin.
English National Opera at the London Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, WC2 (0871-911 0200). Until July 12. £87-£10