The Bartered Bride, Jacksons Lane Theatre, London

Full of youthful promise

A fresh, young opera company needs a house style, and New Youth Opera has one: slickly directed, musically alert, punchy, witty, and firmly faithful to the text, the company has all the ingredients for a sizzling future.

If their latest Bartered Bride fell short of the refinement of last year's Der Freischütz, it was not for lack of trying. Both Marenka (the Royal Academy's Kimberley Myers) and Jenik (Ian Partridge pupil Charne Rochford) have considerable potential if they can be wooed out of lacklustre habits (her stance is too pert, his too sloppy); the Kecal, James Robinson (also Royal Academy), might go even further if reined in. Alex Jacobs's circus manager had a fine dramatic knack; Alexander Evans's pathos-ridden Vasek, nursing a Doppelgänger teddy, served up the subtlest aria of all.

In the set-piece chorusesMatt Lane revealed himself as a director with an eye for detail. The choreographed overture, played by Nicholas Wilks's spirited young musicians, was a kaleidoscope of visual invention – slick yuppie girls leaping out of bed for a day's work in the City, hailing twirling-umbrella taxis. It lent Smetana the buzz of a Bernstein or Porter routine.

Despite fine paired horns and clarinets, nifty bassoon obbligato, one notable viola solo and a zippy Furiant chorus, there was not enough balance. Wilks let his young orchestra overpower the soloists, and in the small Jacksons Lane theatre, this told: even Myers's strong Marenka and Robinson's buffo Kecal were overborne by massed woodwind and a lack of mezzo-forte (let alone piano) from the pit. There was some uneasy sharpness in the cellos, and the odd twanging string; but the young bassist, Rachel Whitworth, did valiantly.

Another drawback was that Lane's male cast declined by Act II into boorish laddishness. No such problem with the girls, whose set pieces (including a hilarious cleaners' ensemble) never ceased to be engaging. Sunk in Western Bohemianism, the opera lost out, perhaps regrettably, on its Czechness, both musically and visually. Rochford's Jenik was too gloomy (he sings head down, jaw jutting). Myers as Marenka delivered as if she were auditioning for an amateur singing competition; she looks not so much a demure village lass as a failed Buttons. Robinson's dusted, manicured, cigar-touting Kecal declined into overacting, unlike the beautifully managed circus troupe, who would have cheered any Pagliacci. A mixed bag, then, but New Youth Opera has plenty of fire in its belly.