It was less a fiery retelling, more a flowery exploration of love and grief, via chicken (pretend child) eating horror artfully directed by Toby Jones. From the outset, that is before this novice viewer had arrived in her seat, nymphs and nymphets draped in white sheets and ivy were posturing and flowing along the passages of Botolph  and Free School Lanes and eerily staring with dark socketed eyes at the overflowing audience queue.

Once extra chairs were ‘found’ the Peter Stobart conducted an expert cast in their retelling of Handel’s Acis and Galatea. The Master’s Lodge was a wondrously apt setting for this dramatic yet ever-so-slightly comic production. Harriet Flower blossomed as Galatea. Her powerful voice touched every viewer and the chorus of ‘happy nymphs and Happy swains’ lifted the heroes.

Polyphemus stole the show raging and burning into the garden. With a capacious mouth, incredibly severe eye (he is the Cyclops after all) and despite some problems with an angry hand, he feasted and drank to capacious expectation whilst drooling after Galatea’s ruddiness and sweetest cherry. His Butler was terrified but Coridon (Alex Berman) gave a tremendous performance advising Polyphemus to go softly, gently, kindly to woe Galatea.

When disaster struck and angelic Acis was decapitated brutally, for loving Galatea so wholly or for wearing a silly suit of arms (hard for this opera neophyte to tell) the sky darkened and utopia was destroyed. Not to end a May Week evening on a grief stricken downer Galatea was lifted out of mourning by wondrous serenade; ‘cease to grief’ they chanted. With fantastic orchestral joy she raised Acis to aqueous glory. Idyllic completion.

An expertly produced piece (by Georgina Eliot - also turning her skills to her oboe), Acis and Galatea is an antidote to the worldly excesses  of the week. This reviewer was awed as the fountain bright restored the idyllic lands as well as Triposian traumas to blissful contentment.