ARMS AND THE COW The Alhambra This time next week Opera North will be preparing for their last couple of nights at Belfast's Grand Opera House.

The time has flashed by since that icy Friday on March 3 when the company opened the season at the Alhambra with The Marriage of Figaro.

Since then, Puccini's La Rondine has been enjoyed by large audiences.

Last night was the opportunity for Kurt Weill's satirical anti-war operetta Arms and the Cow, sung in English, to surprise and delight. Did it?

Let me put it this way, after the first hour and 40 minutes in rehearsal someone must have said: "This charming period piece with its Gilbert and Sullivan overtones has no memorable tunes, no sensational songs and the satire's a bit obvious, don't you think?

What can we do to ginger it up a bit?"

The answer was: bring on the Rocky Horror Show. The second half was more like a cabaret circus in one of those naughty nightclubs in Montmartre; but it worked.

At the end the audience of about 900 was cheering and whistling and whooping for more; easily the most demonstrative reaction to any of the three very different pieces presented by Opera North.

I shall remember Jeffery Lawton, as President Mendez, who spent the first half on a battered sofa suspended a good 20 feet above the heads of the cast.

Arms and the Cow is on tonight and ends on Saturday, starting at 7.15pm.

The box office number is (01274) 432000.