Only four months since its all-star first outing, David McVicar's production of Gounod's Faust returns to Covent Garden. This haste is understandable: with its huge chorus, a set that stretches back as far as the eye can see and costume changes to burn, Faust might break even around 2020.

It seems odd, therefore, that McVicar's staging, here revived by Lee Blakeley, is a hybrid of the floor-to-ceiling Cox and Schlesinger productions that the company is now beginning to pension off, and the Les Mis-type musicals. Still, if it's not-especially fashionable now, it might seem timeless in a year or two, and several of the set pieces are impressive; the dance sequence that holds a mirror to Faust's actions, performed by an innocent-looking corps de ballet that degenerates horribly, is as effective as it is twisted.

It's the smaller-scale scenes that can be a problem. Faust is a long opera, and McVicar doesn't always disguise this. Moreover, the cast Blakeley has had to work with is not quite on the level of last time's starry Gheorghiu-Alagna-Terfel line-up.

Polish tenor Piotr Beczala is ardent but stiff in the title role; Elena Kelessidi makes a passionate, likeable Marguerite without always making a beautiful enough sound in a role written as a diva's showcase. Dalibor Jenis's Valentin is decent enough, and one of the best performances comes from the hugely promising mezzo Katija Dragojevic as his friend Siébel. Maurizio Benini conducts with an ear for the music's darker-tinged side, bringing this out persuasively in thick, velvety string tones.

Yet thank God - or the devil - for John Tomlinson's seductive, mischievous but still threatening Mephistopheles, as mesmeric a presence as ever even if his voice is losing its sheen, and the only one of the principals with the star quality to carry the evening.

· In rep until October 25. Box office: 020-7304 4000.