The one they got away with. . .

So why were the London Symphony Chorus barracking the poor players of the City of London Sinfonia when they first came on stage? Oh, of course... they were getting into character as "Whores and Roaring Boys".

Richard Hickox's promotion of The Rake's Progress at the Barbican, concluding a mini Copland/Stravinsky series, was sloppily semi-staged and often messily played. Boisterousness from the normally staid chorus was supposed to get us in the mood.

Hickox could have exercised a tauter rein and drilled his performers better in advance. He was handicapped by the fact that his soloists were doing a lot of cod production business up front, with Philip Langridge as Tom Rakewell jumping around improbably like a post-adolescent. Hickox was spotlit unremittingly throughout. But he's the maestro.

Rake absolutely needs virtuoso detail and polish in the playing and singing, and Auden and Kallman's wonderful words matter enormously. However, with the lights lowered in the auditorium to focus on the staging, one couldn't read any text one had brought along, while tarty red lighting effects splashed around the chorus.

Langridge, heart and soul of the party, gave a masterly account of his role, ably abetted by Peter Coleman-Wright's Nick Shadow, singing rather tight and intense and not helped either by the crass layout of the stage or the acoustic.

Laura Claycomb as Anne was often barely audible, but sometimes came through sweet and true. Robert Tear's Sellem seemed a bit of a ring-in, mugging up his lines from a score on his auctioneer's desk (in fact, a music stand) when everybody else sang from memory. Pamela Helen Stephen enjoyed herself as Baba the Turk, but didn't use her gift role any more than Tear did his.

The truth about this performance is five words - they got away with it.

The Rake's Progress