The Stage, 9 June 1994, p. 10 The work was again presented at Sadler's Wells in 1995: British Youth Opera was conducted by Timothy Dean. Ohio Light Opera produced the work in 1996. In London there have been productions by the students of two conservatoires: the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1988), with Susannah Waters as Edwige, and the Royal College of Music (2019). The first production in Russia took place in March 2022 by the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre directed by Alexander Titel and conducted by Arif Dadashev. Critical reception Reviewing the original production the critic of Le Figaro, Eugène Tarbé, judged the piece excessively long, with too much music and too much dialogue. He thought the plot predictable and the action held up by too much padding. Tarbé found much to praise among the musical numbers: "a string of happy inspirations, melodies, sometimes joyful and sometimes tender". He thought Edwige's "Conduisez-moi vers celui que j'adore" rather too reminiscent of earlier waltz songs by Offenbach, but thought "Ne le voyez-vous pas?" "a delicious quartet, written in a melodic style, simple and severe at the same time", and singled out among other numbers "Debout, c'est aujourd'hui dimanche", the "Chanson du pot-au-feu" and the overture and entr'actes. After the first revival, in 1973, the critic Winton Dean wrote that although the piece has some very attractive music: there is a basic flaw: Offenbach clearly could not decide whether he was writing opéra comique, which aims at genuine, if stylized, sentiment and character, or operetta, which makes no such claim. The heroine is a straight romantic figure, and so to some extent is the hero. The second pair of lovers and Jim Cocks, a pre-Crusoe emigrant to the Orinoco who preferred to be the cannibals' chef (in two senses) rather than their dinner, are pure operetta. The pirates are of the Penzance variety; the cannibals have a Gilbertian relish for their food. Man Friday ... is, if not original, a convincing character in whom comedy, pathos and native good sense are happily blended. He has the two best airs in the score. In 1974 Andrew Lamb rated Robinson Crusoé "a rewarding score ... the work displays the composer's ability for more ambitious orchestral and vocal writing than usual, and passages of typically racy and tuneful writing alternate with moments of genuine pathos." In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians Lamb