It may have seemed a cunning economic plan at first. James Conway's production for English Touring Opera calls itself "an interpretation" of Janacek's opera: the enactment of a ritual by a group to celebrate fertility and strength. Using Jonathan Dove's highly individual reduction of the score perhaps invited a more contemporary perspective but, given that Janacek so consciously embraced the cyclic ritual of all life, the artificial imposition of another layer - confusing what is already clear and using captions to heighten the confusion -seems particularly perverse.

Neither Conway's creation of universal characters, where, for example, a "headman" acts the forester, nor the conflation of the Vixen with Terynka, the Gypsy girl who in Janacek's original is never seen, added to the staging. Against the backdrop of stylised birch forest, though, there was plenty of pantomimic stage business and some nice visual touches: the mosquito administering his bite with a pump that was part umbrella frame, part syringe, and the young frog bouncing in on a green Space Hopper. But it is a strange production that generally manages to lessen the work's intrinsic charm.

The singing was better. Louise Walsh's Vixen was vocally as well as physically lithe, and her Fox, Clarissa Meek, projected a good, rich sound. But as their wedding became a surrogate affair - a preparation for the marriage of Terynka with the poacher - the music's logic and joy was wantonly dissipated. With the cast of nine bearing the burden of multiple roles, characterisations became superficial, despite the efforts of conductor Peter Robinson, and the symbolism of Janacek's woodland idyll weakened. All in all, this was a vixen suffering from the dramatic equivalent of mange.

· At Kendal Leisure Centre on Friday. Box office: 01539 729702. Then touring.