Overrated director does opera production no favours

The anecdotal sequence of art works from around 1735 is so very theatrical that it is surprising that nobody had turned them into either a play or a film before. There was a ballet by Ninette de Valois in 1935.

Robert Lepage's production, premiered in Brussels last year, takes the opera right out of its original 18th-century setting and plonks it in the 1950s when the opera was premiered.

Tom Rakewell (Charles Castronova) is now a penniless cowboy living on the Rock Hudson-Elizabeth Taylor-James Dean ranch, featured in the film Giant.

Nick Shadow (John Relyea), a devil figure, whisks him off to Hollywood where he becomes a big movie star and lives a life of debauchery, which leads to bankruptcy and insanity.

His visit to a brothel climaxes when he and the madam are literally swallowed up by the big circular bed.

The graveyard scene, with Tom and Nick gambling for Tom's soul, is repositioned in a graffiti-ridden alley. The graffiti lights up Las Vegas fashion and completely upstages Relyea while he is singing.

Anne Truelove (Sally Matthews) is the best friend that any man could ask for. She drives all the way from the US to London only to find that Tom has shacked up with a bearded lady.

Matthews sings gorgeously throughout and, in her act one aria, Lepage wittily gives her a number of false exits, mocking the way that arias so often seem to be coming to an end when there is still more and more and more to come.

The Mozartian score, the conducting by Thomas Ades and the singing are great. It's the production that won't do. The auction scene in and around a Sunset Boulevard swimming pool is ludicrous.

The overrated Lepage has done some excellent work in the past, but he won't be remembered for The Rake's Progress. If he is, he will be singularly unlucky.

Lepage's disappointing production never has the satiric clout of the Hogarth originals. The 1950s updating works so much better for Leonard Bernstein's Candide at ENO.

You can see Hogarth's wonderful paintings at Sir John Sloane's Museum in Holborn, London.

Plays until July 18. Box office: (020) 7304-4000.

ROBERT TANITCH