Christopher Alden and Roy Rallo have directed a staging that one Spoleto insider calls "way outside the box ... incredibly odd and terribly wonderful." (Have a look at the photos below and see what you think.) Conducting is Harry Bicket, the Baroque specialist who takes over the directorship of the period-instrument ensemble The English Concert this year. Keith Phares and Eugene Brancoveanu play Pierrot and Scapin, the two guys who wash up on Merlin's Island after a shipwreck; Amanda Squitieri and Monica Yunus are Diamantine and Argentine, their potential mates. (Yunus's name may sound familiar: her father won last year's Nobel Peace Prize.) Constance Hauman is Hippocratine, the doctor who administers the blessed isle's health care system, and Richard Troxell plays six different roles in one.

L'Ile de Merlin (ou Le monde renvers_) has two remaining performances, tonight and June 9, at the Dock Street Theater in Charleston. For more information on this opera and the rest of Spoleto Festival USA (which closes on June 10), visit www.spoletousa.org.

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All photos by William Struhs for Spoleto Festival USA.