Susanna review, Linbury Theatre, London: An inspiring but flawed take on late Handel

Isabelle Kettle’s rough and ready direction honours neither the comic nor the tragic sides of the work, says Michael Church, destroying the refined balance between the two

Masabane Rangwanasha sings the title role with commanding authority (Stephen Cummiskey)

★★★☆☆

How to prepare for the coming storm? Eat well, keep fit, and enjoy the pleasures that will soon be off the menu. It can’t be long before opera houses close their doors: all the more reason to catch this year’s London Handel Festival, which has kicked off with the rarely-performed oratorio Susanna in a collaboration between the Festival and the Jette Parker Young Artists of the Royal Opera House.

Composed for Covent Garden in 1749, where it had great success, this has not been performed there since, and the refurbished Linbury makes the ideal setting. Happily married to Joacim, lusted after and then ravished by two elders of her oppressed community in sixth-century Babylon, Susanna is sentenced to death for adultery, but is saved by the intervention of the prophet Daniel: this tale has attracted many dramatists.