by Jonathan Grant

As audience take their seats and the lights dim, a sense of stepping back to a golden age of quintessential Englishness gripped those attending the first night of The Perfect Picnic at the Jermyn Street Theatre. A penguin-coated pianist enters stage left and, drawing his white gloves from his hands as if challenging music itself to a duel, takes his seat affront his ivoried desk.

As he tickles the keys, producing all of the majesty of Mozart himself, the eyes of the audience glide across the stage, transfixed on Puck, the angel / fairy / harbinger of joy, as she plants the seeds of our story – two tickets to an Opera gala – into the jacket pocket of recently redundant accountant David Sterling.

However, it quickly transpires that David’s ex-wife, the rising opera star Rachel, is performing at the gala, much to the chagrin of David’s long-suffering girlfriend Sarah. But then she finds herself pursued by the flamboyant celebrity TV designer and sometime boyfriend of Rachel, Michael de Haughton-Tours.

What follows is a tangle of love interspersed with comedy, sung in modern day libretto and to the backdrop of 19th-century watercolours of high society and lazy river scenes.

The Perfect Picnic is opera for the uninitiated, packed full of accessible language, popular references and tongue-in-cheek comedy, without the elitist trappings that give this genre such a daunting reputation. Yet, it is also bursting with old-fashioned magic, sprinkled by the sprite-like Puck (Clare Kinson) and the inclusion of fairytale-like scenes such as the river chorus; this is irrepressibly and unapologetically opera for the twenty first century.

Our cast are impeccable at hitting the high notes and special recognition should go to Cheryl Enever and Lynn Marie Boudreau for their dulcet tones. And there’s much to praise in the tongue-in-cheek comedy, most notable from the male members of our cast, who also happen to be co-writers Tim Armstrong-Taylor and Ian Bloomfield. They left many a laugh hanging in the air at the tightly packed Jermyn Street Theatre.

Yet if this truly were a “perfect” picnic, I would expect a greater variety in the lyrics, which on more than one occasion placed an over-reliance on rhyming couplets, and a good old-fashioned twist and turn to a very linear and signposted plot.

Nevertheless, The Perfect Picnic is to opera what the iPod is to the gramophone. Its accessibility, simplicity and sleek design make it the impeccable evening’s entertainment.

The production continues until February 2 at the Jermyn Street Theatre.