"A Midsummer Night's Dream", Opera North, May 2008
Yet what really drives Duncan's staging is not its evocative trappings but the energy and truthfulness of the acting. The four lovers — Frances Bourne's volatile Hermia, Elizabeth Atherton's masochistically besotted Helena, Peter Wedd's ardent Lysander, Mark Stone's callous Demetrius — are a seething mass of impassioned, immature, indignant and (by Act II) thoroughly bewildered feelings. Even when awakened to “reality” with their confusions supposedly unravelled, Duncan ensures that their body language — holding hands, then suddenly pulling apart — speaks of unresolved fault lines. And all four sing with fervour.
As Enrico Ashton, the grasping, groping brother who causes Lucia's misery, Mark Stone, who has emerged as one of Britain's finest young baritones, is quite outstanding.
Barry Millington, Evening Standard, 18 February 2008
