If you have rosy memories of Up Pompeii, and your idea of a good night out involves men in stick-on beards and Felicity Lott in a silky negligee, then the show you have been waiting for is here.
Laurent Pelly's lively production of Offenbach's operetta La Belle Hélène - created for Lott in Paris six years ago and imported by ENO as an unabashed vehicle for her - should in theory bear a genuine French stamp. Yet somewhere across the channel, for better and for worse, most of it has become rather British.
The most obvious culprit for this is the English makeover given to its text by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, full of prep-school gags and gloriously dreadful Carry-On puns - though there's at least one opportunity for a "lovely pear" joke that goes to waste. Nor can the work be totally anglicised; when the pubescent Orestes, sung by Leah-Marian Jones, arrives with two snarly, gyrating, lingerie-clad sopranos cast for their lack of cellulite, it's clear not all of this has been conceived for a country whose idea of suggestiveness is Kenneth Williams saying, "Oooh Matron".
Just as pervasively, there is something rather am-dram about Pelly's staging. There are ballets of air stewards, men in speedos and sheep, but the snappy inventiveness of Laura Scozzi's choreography doesn't filter through to Pelly's own direction of the chorus.
The show relies on the cult of Lott as much as its story depends on that of Aphrodite - and she delivers, playing to the gallery and using every vocal trick in the book to get her lines across. Her Paris is Toby Spence, who once again gets to earn back his gym membership fee as a plummy but heroically sung toy-boy who whips off his shirt at any opportunity.
Emmanuel Joel conducts with pace and poise, and the supporting cast is excellent: even the small roles of the kings of Hellas include such pros as John Graham-Hall. Steven Page plays the augur Calchas as Frankie Howerd, and Bonaventura Bottone is a crystal-clear Menelaus. But when the most stylish thing on stage is a bunch of dancers in woolly sheep costumes, you have to wonder whether this production isn't lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.
· In rep until May 19. Box office: 0870 145 0200.
