Edinburgh Arts: <i>The Lindberg flight/The flight over the ocean</i> and <i>The seven deadly sins</i>

The Lindberg flight/The flight over the ocean and The seven deadly sins

A Weill/Brecht double bill may sound a little unlikely for the operatic stage, but this was a challenge pulled off with great aplomb. Financial prosperity provides a link between the two, banknotes raining down at the end of the Flight to be rolled about in through a good deal of the Sins. The only other connection came in the backdrop, a map highlighting the journey of the characters.

Of the two, the Sins is without a doubt more of a crowd-pleaser, allowing for infinitely more scope for imaginative staging. François Girard and Marie Chouinard (director and choreographer respectively) have gone to town here - even including break-dancing, of all things! - on a set dominated by the colour scarlet. Happily, they are more than matched by Gun-Brit Barkmin's astounding performance as Anna I, veering between the lyrical and raucous with the consumate ease of an Ute Lemper. Yet her biography tells us that she has also sung Mimì and the Countess in Figaro ...

It is just as well the Flight preceded this. Much less showy, Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt visible on every aspect of the production, it feels like something of an oddity for Weill, the music sounding at times more like Shostakovich. With Charles Workman perhaps a little hoarse in the title role, the work of the chorus came centre-stage, every syllable beautifully clear. Here, as in the Sins, Urban Malmberg in particular stood out among the smaller roles, though this was very much Barkmin's evening.

The Lindberg flight/The flight over the ocean and The seven deadly sins are at 7:15pm at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre (Nicholson St) until Wednesday, 16th August. Phone the EIF box office (0131 473 2000) for details.