You've come for the pong of the incense, the frenzied knife attack and that climactic leap off the battlements. And you won't be disappointed.

In David Freeman's well-drilled revival of his 1999 in-the-round production, we get exactly what the doctor ordered: blood (not just on Tosca's hands, but spurting out of Cavaradossi's chest), bells and smells for the Te Deum, and, yes, Cynthia Lawrence's fearless Tosca, who briefly turns Olympic diver to plunge headfirst to her spectacular demise.

Freeman's production has the great benefit of simplicity. Unlike other Raymond Gubbay spectacles - Butterfly with its flooded Japanese garden, Bohème with the Moulin Rouge rollerskaters - this one has no dominant idée fixe, playing out fluidly on blood-red mats and around forbidding cages, be they the bars of church chapels or those of Scarpia's dungeon.

But does it ultimately make a convincing argument for Tosca as spectacle in the first place? Not quite. One lingering nag has to be the amplification system. It's clever enough to even out the orchestra (the Royal Philharmonic, ponderously conducted by Peter Robinson) with the singers, allowing us to hear most of Amanda Holden's slightly creaky translation in the process. But in doing so it creates an aural fudge. You know that Lawrence has the lungs for Tosca without the support; you also know that Joseph Wolverton's Cavaradossi doesn't: as his voice thins out on top, the mikes carry it, but not much expression survives.

Ultimately, Freeman's staging is a bit of a fudge, too. Is it going for overblown or straining for naturalism? Hard to tell: when the big moments come, you long for a few more bodies on stage and a few more effects; in the intimate moments you want to be closer up. And, having made great play of his decision to include Cavaradossi's torture on stage, Freeman shies away from the implications and does nothing with the scene to shock anyone out of their comfort zone.

Some performances beef things up. Peter Sidhom's purring bear of a Scarpia is good value (although he was dangerously hoarse by the middle of Act II on opening night); Wolverton, sadly, remains a blank slate throughout, convincing neither as the naive artist nor as the thwarted revolutionary.

But Lawrence has the vocal goods, giving plenty of full-blooded, gutsy singing before her Evel Knievel exit. All that she needs, like the show, is a little more edge.

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