But of course, as we all know, one cannot remain suspended in this state. The world will crash in. Society upholds certain rules and it is respondent to power, no matter the pull of true love. If this staging of “Manon” is about how far would you go for the one you love, it is set against a backdrop of the plight of women, and Manon’s own fear of what being poor entails and the shame that accompanies such poverty. And so, the world Hendricks and Linnane inhabit, even in the bedroom, is one of rags, beautiful, artful rags, in sets designed by Peter Farmer. In the splendour of the Regent Theatre, and from my vantage in the dress circle, the set, with all its players, looked like an exquisite storybook jewel I would like to fold up and store in my pocket. Appearing perfectly at home in this environment, with the lighting design of Jacopo Pantani, relit by Jason Morphett, rags and beggars are woven through every part of the fabric of “Manon,” an ever-present reminder of the reality Hendricks’s Manon operates within. Hendricks reveals the curtailed power Manon has through the almost unreachable quality she imbues during a scene in Madame X’s hôtel particulier in which she all but skips over the heads of the men who would have her. Placing the emphasis upon Hendricks’s control of her body, she is not passively passed from man to man like a commodity, she is active, aloft, elsewhere. She is finding what power she can in a scenario that is ultimately impossible for her to steer.