"General Manager Francesca Zambello and Music Director and Conductor Joseph Colaneri are fearless artists and can pretty much pull anything off together ...Once again the team has uncannily intuited a theatrical way into a classic to grab today’s audience by speaking to today’s headlines and these still “difficult times.” . . .
Michael Mayes as Count di Luna who appears in a sharp blue suit and dark sunglasses seemed perfectly cast as the powerbroker count, or perhaps a dictator of a small country, which he runs like a mafia boss. He models well the upright, puffed-up posture of men with short fingers and big narcissistic egos. There was more than a nod to testosterone-filled, entitled leaders used to getting their own way with young powerless woman and not above forcing them against their will.
Mayes carries us along through his thought processes, shifting as he plots and careening from one mood to another. There is an intelligent animal instinct in Mayes’s approach to roles, also an underlying danger, but di Luna’s carriage indicates he is always seemingly aware he is before a public."
