Nicky Shaw

“The splendid Mid Wales Opera opened its 25th anniversary year with a fresh and charming production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, a gorgeous combination of young talent and aspiring professionals in a show that cannot fail to delight.”

“The set and costume designs from Nicky Shaw give an elegantly clean and uncluttered take on the Greek myth.”

“This is almost a set within a set as a large box on the stage opens creating different spaces, allowing the players to weave in and out of doors, cut outs, around trees.”

“With Brecon Baroque players and a student chorus on the side of the stage, this is a charming and inspired ensemble work from a company that refuses to allow budget and touring bounds restrict its ambition.”

“Handel's pastoral opera – Greek idyll turned tragic – offers the perfect masterclass in baroque style, and this production marked a happy collaboration between Nicholas Cleobury's Mid-Wales Opera, violinist Rachel Podger's Brecon Baroque and students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.”

“From an initially unassuming plywood diptych emerges an ingenious, orgami-like, painted set, whose folding and unfolding doors add variety to the basic portrait of rural charm.”

“With movement wittily choreographed to Handel's lilting rhythms and a Feydeauesque charm to Acis and Galatea's in-and-out-the-houses love-chase, all was sunshine and roses. Sudden darkness dispelled that, with the shadow of giant Polyphemus looming large and the transition from first to second act much slicker for going through without interval.”

“Miskimmon's most telling intervention was in the death of Acis: yes, the jealous giant killed him with a stone, but there was no collapse of body in an embarrassing heap. Rather, Acis became first a stone statue, then a walking wraith. It set in train a ritual candle-lit procession, all the more affecting for the hushed pianissimo from Podger and her players. Out of this, Acis's subsequent transformation into a running spring had a feeling of hope and consolation attuned to both myth and music.”

“A gorgeous combination of young talent and aspiring professionals in a show that cannot fail to delight… with Brecon Baroque players and a student chorus on the side of the stage, this is a charming and inspired ensemble work.”

“A collaboration that clearly paid off as the Greek myth based love-triangle tale was performed beautifully by the cast, chorus and orchestra.”