Theatre: The plot's not the thing

The most common question people ask when I recommend a show they've never heard of is not "How does it make you feel?" or "Who's in it?" or even "Give me three reasons why I should waste my money on that." No: nine times out of 10 the response is "What's it about?"

Understandable but daft. Would you rush to any of these: "Rude man insists on moving in with American couple after breaking his hip on their front step" - the great comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner. A bored, hard-drinking couple hurl abuse and savages the marriage of a colleague - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Boy blinds six horses and talks to his moaning psychiatrist - Equus. A mentally unstable, homicidal student wreaks havoc in his extended family for four-and-a-half hours - Hamlet.

So much for synopses. None the less, like the popular novel, popular theatre is big on plot. People like a nice story. That's why thrillers were such a stage staple in the days before they swamped TV schedules. Thrillers give great narrative closure. (I think you have to read that last sentence with an American accent.)

Opera, however, stands outside this tradition. You'd have to be barking mad to attend opera for the plot. Nor do you have to visit the wilder shores of the repertoire to find dramatic lunacy at large: greatest hits like Il Trovatore have enough mistaken identity and absurd contrivance to make Dynasty look like Waiting for Godot.

That said, the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre once staged Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier without the music, making a very strong case for Hofmannsthal's superb libretto, and there are plenty of operas whose theatricality needs no apology. Britten used grown-up libretti, and Falstaff is a masterpiece by anyone's standards.

The most famous sustained synthesis of music and drama, however, is Mozart's da Ponte trilogy. Deborah Warner delivered an outstanding Don Giovanni for Glyndebourne, and in the early Eighties, the late-lamented Opera Factory kicked off their trilogy with a hysterically funny and shockingly moving Cosi fan tutte. That took the Bay of Naples setting literally and put the first act on a beach, complete with swimwear, sunglasses and more than a hint of sun, sea and sex.

ENO has Figaro's Wedding, in Jeremy Sams's superbly witty translation, but recent revivals have been shaky. By far the funniest and most dramatically cogent Mozart production I've ever seen was The Marriage of Figaro in the inspired hands of Music Theatre London.

Since then, the company's fortunes have been mixed. A stunningly poignant La Traviata balanced an awkward Magic Flute.

But three of the reasons why Figaro was so transportingly good are back in place in their new show, The Bat aka Die Fledermaus (above). And they are: Gerard Casey, an almost reptilian but devastating former Don Giovanni, as Frank; comic expert Simon Butteriss as Orlofsky; and, fresh from playing the leading man in the musical The Slow Drag, Liza Sadovy, back in women's clothes as Adele.

This mouthy maid is not a million miles away from Sadovy's role in Figaro. Anyone who saw her superbly sung, sensational Susanna (who for once really did power the plot) will be clamouring for a ticket. If you can't get in, panic not. The production transfers to the Drill Hall next month.

Arts Theatre, WC2 (0171-420 0171) from 26 May