It may have been fitting that Newtown, birthplace of the social reformer Robert Owen, should be the first stop for a setting of Beaumarchais, but Mid Wales Opera's new touring production of The Marriage of Figaro has precious little sense of the revolutionary zeal that so fired Mozart.

Updating the action to Edwardian times, director Martin Lloyd-Evans treats Figaro as farce - more Whitehall than Feydeau - eventually creating plenty of laughs, but confusing the audience along the way. More disquieting is the fact that the comedy seems at odds with the music, when Mozart's gift is for characterisation as witty as it is apt. The four-poster platform containing the action is a ramshackle, Heath Robinson affair. There are no doors, only floor-to-ceiling elastic straps with knobs attached: an in-built joke, perhaps, but one that makes every exit and entrance clunkingly clumsy, not to say hazardous.

Conductor Keith Darlington, bowing out as artistic director, ensures a lively pace, and there are quite strong performances from Wyn Pencarreg as the bullying, groping Almaviva, and Kim Sheehan as a pert Susanna, although Dean Robinson's Figaro never seems comfortable in his first world war sergeant's uniform. Gaynor Keeble plays Marcellina as Lady Bracknell, while Benjamin Segal's mincing Don Basilio is a Wildean touch.

However, this is frequently wincing stuff. It takes a perverse production to diminish the stature of one of the greatest operas in the repertoire. This does so.

Until tomorrow. At the Lawrence Batley theatre, Huddersfield, on 12 September. Box office: 01484 430528. Then touring.