SCARLATTI'S REVENGE

RONDO THEATRE, BATH

Domenico Scarlatti had the misfortune of being born in 1685 - the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Handel. It may have been the lack of that vital middle name, or possibly his penchant for composing sonatas, but Scarlatti has failed to maintain the same ranking in the baroque and roll top ten enjoyed by his exact contemporaries. The Natural Theatre Company have dedicated a considerable amount of time to restoring him to his rightful position. As a result, they have had stupendous pan-national success with their productions of Scarlatti's Birthday Party and Scarlatti's Wedding - particularly in Germany. So much so that the third part of the Scarlatti story, Scarlatti's Revenge, has been created especially for those fun-loving Germans. In fact, the only Britons likely to get a peep at the latest instalment in the Scarlatti Trilogy were those who managed to obtain gold-dust tickets for the public previews in the Naturals' home town of Bath. Anyone wanting to complete their Scarlatti hat-trick will therefore have to head for Germany. Do not, however, book your flight in the expectation of seeing the usual Natural thing.

Scarlatti's Revenge revolves around the staging of a 'Millennium Experience Musical Spectacular' - and revels richly in the chance to run through the greatest hits from the last one thousand years. Pitched somewhere between a highbrow musical revue and a very lowbrow chamber concert, it offers everything from Disney's I'm the King of Swingers to Orff's O Fortuna. John Sampson's ability to play a host of wind instruments and make funny faces at the same time is a vital ingredient, and one which strangely does not begin to pale, even when he does it for the tenth or eleventh time. Yet the production lacks the mind-bending linguistic wit one expects of the Natural Theatre Company. A lot of the humour comes from spontaneous interaction with the audience, whether its the Naturals' trademark Coneheads - baffled alien sightseers exploring spectators with an endearing puzzledness and lack of inhibition - or a bouncing baby Scarlatti sitting on people and telling them they smell.

As a comedy, Scarlatti's Revenge is considerably less sophisticated than the company's recent children's play, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, where much of the wit and wordplay was too intricate for the short-trouser brigade. It is Scarlatti's Revenge which feels more like the production for kids. The plot - which only really unfolds in the second half - is so thin it would need an electron microscope to detect, and there's an aching shortage of the puns, sophisticated cultural cross-referencing and good old-fashioned silliness which characterise the Naturals at their best. There is, however, the excuse that the show is specifically designed for a German audience. That is not to say that our Continental cousins are not sophisticated - perish the thought! - but that jokes like "Carefully!" "No, it looks more like Cheddar" would tax any audience not made up of native speakers.

Like eating horses and yodelling, Scarlatti's Revenge may well turn out to be one of those things that foreigners enjoy which leave the English 'sang' fairly 'froid'. It is best summed up in the comment from Naturals maestro Ralph Oswick during the curtain call: "The Germans will love it". Das ist ja sicher!

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE