Review in The Times.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>For all I know, then, the first 20 minutes were dazzling. What I did see, however, didn’t always seem to click. <P>Could it have been the music? Cole Porter’s 1934 score contains some of his most scintillating songs — You’re the Top, Blow Gabriel Blow and the show’s title-song among them. And this production used John McGlynn’s reconstruction of the original strings-based orchestration. But either string players in the Thirties applied a very heavy bow, or there simply weren’t enough of them in Nick Davies’s pit band here, because many songs lacked punch and rhythmic verve. <P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,685-330127,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><P>And in The Guardian.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Grange Park Opera may appear to be one of those country-house extravaganzas where the audience rivals the shows in theatrical posing, but there is no doubting the seriousness of its artistic ambitions. Since last season a totally new theatre has been built on the spectacular parkland site. It is all but fully financed, too; the building is up and running a year ahead of schedule. It promises to be a welcoming, intimate space, accommodating an audience of 500 on red velvet seats salvaged from the Royal Opera House's refurbishment. At a first encounter the acoustics seem to be on the dry side, and it is hard to imagine how La Traviata and The Turn of the Screw, the mainstream offerings this year, will come across in such a space. But for this year's novelty, Cole Porter's 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes, they give the sound a crisp precision, without any amplification at all - which is ideal. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,3604,738830,00.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A><p>[This message has been edited by Joanne (edited June 18, 2002).]

Review in The FT. It sounds like a great English experience.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Before each performance the house rules are announced from the stage: "Switch off your mobile phone, dip your car headlights on the way out so as not to disturb the neighbours, and please don't pick the numbers off the seats as souvenirs."<P>People who think Glyndebourne is the paragon of English eccentricity have not heard about Grange Park. Situated close to Winchester, it occupies the wreck of a once noble country house, designed in magnificent Greek Revival style. The semi-derelict mansion sits in a valley of gently rolling Hampshire hills like the grandest of classical follies - a symbolic setting for an opera festival, if ever there was one.<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1024172319393&p=1016625900929" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

review in The Independent.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>If Grange Park Opera (now in its fifth season, and with a friendly new auditorium taking shape) is already thinking of a follow-up to its current revival of Cole Porter's 1934 classic Anything Goes, then they might consider Porter's Out of this World (after Plautus, a long way after Plautus), a show thoroughly in keeping with the Grange's Greek revivalist architecture. Or they might simply say Doric-schmoric, these musicals are too much like hard work.<P>They sure are. They need careful and expert handling – a producer with a good nose for comedy, an inventive choreographer, and no passengers in the cast. There are a good few of those in David Pountney's production – partly on account of it taking place on board a transatlantic cruise-ship (jolly Art Deco poster-style set from Johann Engels), but also partly because, frankly, not everybody is up to the crossing. Pountney himself never really comes to grips with the madcap improbabilities of the plot, if you'll forgive my careless use of the p-word<BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/reviews/story.jsp?story=311266" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

Anything Goes
By Peter Hepple for The Stage


I doubt if any show this year will receive a more joyous reception than Trevor Nunn's National Theatre production of this Cole Porter classic, the original book by PG Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse being slightly modernised by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, who have injected a few sharp one-liners into a script which is delightfully dated already.

What it proves, of course, is that there is still an appetite for the type of American musical that drew in the crowds 50 years and more ago. This one is set on a thirties ocean liner, when all the passengers are smart and wealthy.

click for more