It is a shame the Opera Group could only play two nights of its latest show in Brighton.

Its version of Leonard Bernstein's Candide was colourful, fast, bawdy and verging on the wild - I'm sure Bernstein would have loved it.

From short skirts, hefty cleavages to simulated sex and peek-a-boo bras, there was eye candy aplenty.

But there was also some rather fine singing great music and a whole lot of fun.

Candide is taken partly from the 18th-Century philosopher Voltaire's story of the same name, a plea for tolerance.

It occupies a rather curious middle ground between opera and musical but it isn't exactly operetta either.

The original script, written by journalist Lillian Helman in the mid-Fifties was a heartfelt attack on the anti-communist McCarthy era but the work has been extensively revised to become a fun piece of music with scope for almost anything you care to mention.

The Opera Group played it strictly for laughs, although the message was still strong.

The tale concerns our hero Candide, a gardener to an aristocratic Westphalian family who falls in love with the young baroness. Thwarted by her family and thrown out of the castle, Candide embarks on a journey that takes him around the world.

It includes service in the Bavarian army, punishment at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, storms, earthquakes, a shipwreck and more adventures in South America where he discovers El Dorado, is robbed by pirates, betrayed by friends and yet somehow remains optimistic throughout.

Along the way, he loses his great love, is reunited, loses her again and finally finds her again in a Venetian brothel.

Candide was, if nothing else, a romp through a pretty wicked, although extremely funny world even if the amazing Doctor Pangloss kept assuring our hero everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

John Fulljames directed his company with consummate deftness and skill and, from a largely young ensemble cast, got some great singing and acting.

He came up with some of the funniest and the most saucy scenes I have seen on the Brighton stage in a long time.

Bernstein's music was given full reign. It was Bernstein doing parody and pastiche of virtually every operatic line you have ever heard.

There was a lot of West Side Story in the show but it also harked back to pastiches of early music and well as music from the Romantic period.

Musical director Patrick Bailey handled his 15-strong orchestra in a manner to suggest a full symphony orchestra, providing music to exactly match the antics on stage.

The Opera Group is a company to watch. On the evidence of this show, it will emerge as one of the finest comic opera companies, ideally suited with a young and talented cast to perform some of the classics of the 20th-Century repertoire.

I will certainly be in the audience should they return.