It’s hard to believe that the American musical polymath Leonard Bernstein had just taken over the reins of New York’s formidable Philharmonic Orchestra when he was also at work on the groundbreaking musical West Side Story. Simultaneously, he was also collaborating with a terrific team to transform Voltaire’s philosophical novella, Candide, into a timely operetta.

Both Voltaire and Bernstein were writing during considerable political upheaval (for Bernstein, that meant being subject to FBI surveillance) and Candide‘s strong messages remain pertinent today.

State Opera South Australia & State Theatre Company South Australia’s Candide. Photo © Andrew Beveridge

Although the original Broadway Candide was a box office failure (it ran for only 73 performances), its soundtrack recording, featuring Barbara Cook and Robert Rounseville, quickly became a cult favourite. This urged other producers to take a shot at it, and, over the decades, Candide transmogrified from a musical to an opera to a song-through operetta with differing degrees of success. Some productions have played it for satire, others for purely comic effect.

This new co-production between State Opera and the State Theatre Company aims for the funny bones and generally succeeds very well. Most productions have...