Voltaire's Candide (or, Optimism- to give it its full title) was published 250 years ago, and it is a long, strange journey that brings this picaresque story to the Coliseum for its 21st century London debut in today's mimesis. Once a satire on the German philosopher Leibniz's theory of 'optimisme' - a then newly-coined term which refuted the existence of evil, and complacently held that in life, 'everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds' - it later mutated. Leonard Bernstein's adaptive opera, panned when first performed on Broadway in 1956, was the idea of its original, pioneering librettist, rebel manque, Lillian Hellman, who saw in the bizarre trajectory of events, a tragic tale reflecting her own and the U.S.A's struggle against McCarthy's irrational witch-hunt of all things 'unamerican'.
      Any attempt to explain the plot's baffling, bi-polar, highs and lows, would be wasted. Transparently, the terrible mishaps and bewildering reversals of fortune that befall the characters are either the fault of capricious nature, or, of humanity. They illustrate the folly of adhering to the delusion that fate has our best interests at heart.
      Let us put aside the cross-century casuistry of Candide's macrocosm, and concentrate on Bernstein's sweeping score. In reductio, it enjoys a favourable airing at the baton of Rumon Gamba's debut for the ENO. He gathers up the diverse skeins of rhythm, source and coloratura which distinguish the composer's complex oeuvre, and weaves them into an exhilarating, cohesive whole. The assembled company's voice-work is consistent, if not exceptional: Toby Spence assays his debut in the title-role with winsome, weakling charm; while Anna Christy's poignant Cunegonde has the benefit of having been honed by her experience at the production's Paris debut and at La Scala last year.
We are told that Director Robert Carsen, along with his long-standing dramaturge, Ian Burton, have freely adapted the source for this novel new staging. Against the odds, it works - despite longeurs, a certain archness, and an air of the Rocky Horror Show about their Master of Ceremonies: a bewigged, omniscent Voltaire/Prospero character. The latter, (a smirking, preening Alex Jennings) presides over Carsen's Westphalia and its Kennedy-style presidential family of nobles, like a scrying compere. The stage, encased within a giant 'television set' proscenium, runs clips of seminal 'Fifties news reels on its backdrop.
     Tony Award-winner, Rob Ashford is to be commended for his dazzling dance choreography. Scenes where a synchronised crowd of suited men and women brandish red flags, before a sinister host of Klu-Klux Klan cone-heads swarm the stage in a frenetic hootenanny, were especially scintillating. Ashford's frenetic pace is well-served by Buki Shiff's stunning costumes and Michael Levine's imagination-piqueing sets. Among the challenges he assays for the first act, are a scaffold, screen test and gilded cage. Later, Ellis Island, Hawaii and Las Vegas are recreated for the 'brave new world' of Eldorado/America, framed by a curlicue of gigantic dollar-emprinted curtains.
      Christ-like, Voltaire's hero survives fate's auto-da-fe and its furies. High-colour melodrama must cede to harsh reality. He is left without blind idealism, but with the blood, flesh and clay of his beloved Cunegonde. The audience have their own trials through this production, for it is overlong and its trajectory opaque. However, like Candide, we must ultimately conclude that some things were for the best, if not in all worlds.
Caroline Kellett Fraysse