★★☆☆☆
Covent Garden’s bosses clearly don’t want to relinquish Barrie Kosky’s adventurous staging of Carmen. First seen in February, this brazen bonanza of musical theatre is here for a winter run and will return next summer.
Illness has brought a sudden cast change; until December 8 the man-eating cigarette girl will be Gaëlle Arquez, not the advertised Ksenia Dudnikova. Yet whoever plays the part thereafter, you’re guaranteed much the same experience, with a cast expert not just in singing, but in writhing, twitching, looking ghoulish and forming patterns over a huge run of steps (the sole set), while the characters and passions of Bizet’s opera alternately bubble up and dribble down the drain.
Carmen’s official first entrance isn’t impressive, donned in a gorilla suit