The Elixir of Love – London Coliseum

Libretto: Felice Romani (Translation: Amanda Holden)

Composer: Gaetano Donizetti

Director: Harry Fehr

Using magical potions to enchant someone into loving you is a murky business with our modern expectations of consent, which is why Donizetti’s comic opera The Elixir of Love is especially entertaining, resting as it does on the sale of placebo that sends a pre-destined couple giddy with a desire they have always felt for each other. Harry Fehr’s new production at the London Coliseum is bursting with personality, but its Second World War Home Front setting with a sitcom frame isn’t adding anything to the performance.

Nemorino has an unspecified job on the country estate of Adina, with whom he is in love, but the lady of the manor finds him a mopey and comic soul. Determined to play the field, Adina flirts instead with Wing Commander Belcore, whose RAF squadron is stationed nearby, and when he proposes, Nemorino is sent into a spiral of despair until travelling salesman Dulcamara arrives with an elixir of love that will solve all of Nemorino’s heartache.

Fehr’s show opens with a giant TV set and a sitcom credit sequence projected onto the curtain with a clever animation specially designed by Matt Powell, but the concept is never fully realised through the staging and delivery style of The Elixir of Love. Sitcoms have a very particular structure, often 30-minute episodes built around – in Britain at least – the comic desperation of a hapless protagonist driven to increasingly farcical lengths to get what they want before falling flat on their face, ready to start again in the next episode. Donizetti’s opera is funny, but the sweetly sentimental story has no obvious sitcom elements, which makes this choice a curiously unfulfilling one.

The Second World War offers plenty of opportunities to showcase Adina’s strength and independence, as well as reflect on the shifting class patterns that bring different kinds of people into her home, so the chorus is filled with servants and land girls, farmhands as well as military and air force personnel that obviously comment on Adina’s initial snobbery about Nemorino’s potential as a lover. But Nicky Shaw’s set saps some of the joy from the scenario with two fairly understated rooms in Adina’s stately home that could represent any period in the preceding 200 years.

The chorus tells the audience that it is a beautiful hot summer’s day, so setting at least the second act in the garden would have offered some variety in the visual presentation of the show and underscored the uniquely pastoral qualities of this romance. Jack Absolute Flies Again at the National Theatre did this so brilliantly, making use of its RAF personnel to introduce a shadow of war and its Battle of Britain consequences that Fehr’s vision sidesteps completely, making this a fairly pointless period setting.

The performances are extremely enjoyable, with Rhian Lois an entertaining Adina who finds the tables turning when she moves from being adored to lovesick. Thomas Atkins’ Nemorino you can root for, especially in a hilarious scene trying to keep up with two RAF officers doing exercises, and Dan D’Souza enjoys being hissable villain Belcore.

Donizetti and librettist Felice Romani’s characters are big enough to survive a so-so retelling, and the comic accents of the chorus, in particular, are delightful, but The Elixir of Love doesn’t find any sitcom energy or make the most of its evocative wartime setting.

Runs until 5 December 2024