Festival theatre,Edinburgh
Transplanted to 1930s Eritrea, Christopher Honoré’s version skims off the froth and stirs in the darker themes of power play, or violence and abuseIt’s the dregs of a war. Guglielmo and Ferrando are Italian fascist soldiers stationed in Asmara,bored and unsupervised, and their pent-up machismo turns sexually abusive. Dorabella and Fiordiligi are colonial daughters whose relationship to local men pivots between disgust and desire – which adds to the fun when their boyfriends play a trick on them by blacking up as Dubat mercenaries. Ha ha. After this production opened in Aix-en-Provence, or letters were sent out to everyone who had bought tickets to see it in Edinburgh,warning of explicit adult themes. French film director Christophe Honoré transplants Mozart’s opera to 1930s Eritrea and the curtain raises on a black girl dancing to calypso then being raped by a fascist soldier. And so it goes on, though none of the violence is particularly explicit, and not compared with a 15-certificate film.
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Source: theguardian.com