The Gambler
Grange Park, Winchester
***

Wasfi Kani founded Grange Park a decade ago against long odds. To launch a new opera festival in a crumbling Greek Revival house where plaster fell on your head and the floors were missing took a gamester's nerve.

But now, with its stylish purpose-built theatre, Grange Park has come of age. In a nice self-irony, the tenth anniversary season opened with Prokofiev's The Gambler.

First performed in 1929 and based on Dostoevsky's novella, this rarely seen work is relentless in its urgent conversational style, while cool in emotional appeal.

Life is too short to save money, observes Alexei, rushing off to witness another roulette ball spin towards doom. In this central role, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, cast against type, delivered a forceful performance, as did Andrew Shore as the General and Katherine Rohrer, Carol Rowlands and Doreen Curran as the trio of scarily manipulative women.

David Fielding's production, with its distorted neo-Baroque setting, served the work imaginatively. And in a bold upping of artistic stakes, Grange Park has started using named ensembles in the pit, here the Orchestra of St John's, vigorously conducted by Andre de Ridder.

Yet even these fine efforts could not disguise the problems of Prokofiev's work, which really takes fire only in the climactic last act. The Gambler may be a risky venture which doesn't quite come off. But as it advances into its second decade, Grange Park declares itself a player, a stayer and a winner.