Back in the 1970s and 1980s Kent Opera was a thriving and pioneering small-scale company nurturing the likes of Nicholas Hytner, Jonathan Miller and Roger Norrington. Then the Arts Council stopped its funding, and it stopped thriving. Now there's New Kent Opera, three seasons old and based in Margate's dusty gem of a theatre, aiming to take on the former's mantle. The mission deserves support.

However, this static and undynamic staging of an early work by Mozart is not the best way of asking for it. The slow story concerns Alexander the Great and a shepherd called Aminta who is the rightful king but doesn't know it. Roger Butlin's set - broken museum-exhibit statues framing a circular sheepskin-carpeted platform - at least provides a stylish setting.

Alexander spends much of his time surveying the proceedings from a side box. For most of Act 1 he looks bored, as well he might. Things liven up a little in the second act, but Tim Carroll's direction doesn't give the characters enough to do, and refuses to pick up on any of the topical things about liberation and oppression Alexander has to say in Amanda Holden's translation.

And those funding issues refuse to go away: the company can't afford understudies, so with the mezzo Diana Moore having lost her voice we had the conductor, Roger Hamilton, singing Tamiri's recitatives in a disembodied, falsetto-ish tenor from the pit while Moore acted, mute, on stage. Her arias were played beautifully on the violin by Caroline Balding, but they might usefully have been cut.

It's a shame as there are some good singers on stage: Rebecca Bottone's fluid Elisa; James Oxley's flowing Alexander; Amy Freston's initially monochrome but later warm Aminta. Under Hamilton the orchestra plays with spirit and style. And anyone who thinks innovative opera and theatre should exist outside the major cities will wish New Kent Opera well. But they've got a way to go yet.

· Until Saturday. Box office: 01843 293877.