The Light Opera Group of the Negev, which has endeared itself to audiences country-wide with its Gilbert and Sullivan productions, is changing pace this year. The all-amateur company, which gives surprisingly professional performances, has chosen the Jacques Offenbach operetta La Belle Helene for its spring production. When La Belle Helene premiered in Paris in 1864, it was an even bigger hit than the composer's

Orpheus in the Underworld was a couple of years before.

All Europe hummed the wonderful tunes and chuckled at its outrageous sendup of Second Empire society, thinly disguised as Greek mythology. They still do. Helen (Hazel Yuchetel), queen of Sparta, is the legendary beauty who ran off with Trojan Prince Paris (Adi Adar), and so started the ten-year Trojan War.

That is should be serious stuff, except that this version is a very light, yet highly satirical, look at history, religion, morals, and social mores. The characters aren't nice or honest or truthful. Director Jacobo Kaufman encouraged the actors to think of the less pleasant side of human behaviour when fleshing out their parts.

Calchas (Amiel Schotz), the High Priest of Jupiter, combines greed with

hypocrisy, aided and abetted by a quintet of kings who are somewhat less than epic, from cuckolded Menelaus (Ed Spitz) in an appropriately horned helmet, to shaggy-headed Agammemnon (Marcus Meirowitz). Add a playboy prince called Orestes (Lisa Troen Hatzir), a gaggle of bubble-headed beauties and some high camp from Helen and Paris, and all is in place for an evening of merriment and music.