TA-RAN-TA-RA !
Mike Leigh, a veteran better known for films, Abigail’s Party and theatrical experiments with scriptless rehearsal, is also a dedicated devotee of the utterly scripted Gilbert & Sullivan, and ten years ago directed this production of their 1879 triumph. Now revival director Sarah Tipple gives it high spirits and full vigour from an orchestra and chorus visibly enjoying the ride; it always feels grand when an opera house lets its hair down, and Cal McCrystal’s Pinafore here was unforgettably entertaining. So, as a fairly recent Gilbert & Sullivan convert (for full confession see here https://theatrecat.com/tag/hms-pinafore/) I couldn’t miss this version.
Some may be disconcerted by the way Alison Chitty’s set deliberately sweeps away the Victoriana to place the action mainly in a giant porthole cut out of a vast blue space ( which editrix Miranda, just up the road in. Devil wears Prada , would call – er – cerulean). I resisted this geometric colour-block starkness a bit at first, as the cutout shapes changed to be seashore or country estate cemetery, but in the second half Chitty’s shapes beautifully serve the popping up of hiding,helmeted police. And there is everything G&S to love: rhymes both brilliant and disgraceful (gyrate/pirate!) glorious choruses, fine sentimental arias sending themselves up.
Perhaps above all, in the grand Coliseum, that’s the key pleasure of Savoy Operas, forever sending up not only the intense Britishness of their own Victorian age but the medium itself, with wicked pastiche. At their best the duo’s operettas feel like the bastard child of bel canto and music-hall. When Isabelle Peters’ Mabel bursts into her declarations of love for the stunned Frederic (fellow Harewood Artist William Morgan) she shoots up into almost terrifying Puccini intensity; John Savournin’s bass-baritone Pirate King is every Verdi villain. Except, of course, for the ridiculousness: it also kept occurring to me how much Monty Python and Spike Milligan owed to WS Gilbert’s determinedly offbeam absurdism: grand figures unexpectedly illogical, official figures in uniform proffering unexpected values, imperial-age concepts of heroism , duty and patriotism bravely guyed: think what a relief it must have been to the first audiences. Once or twice before the police vs pirates battle the Spanish Inquisition sketch floated into my mind.
But to come to the point, it’s a glorious evening, ta-ran-ta-ra. Richard Stuart, who last played the role here twenty years ago, launches into his modern-major-general number through a thicket of whiskers, rattling along like an Olympic hurdler on fast-forward. James Cresswell, fresh from the Met and Paris, unforgettably leads the police: his men wincing beautifully behind him while the ladies’ chorus trills their hope for death as well as glory. Squeaks and gales of laughter. And as for those ladies in their swagged muslins, boaters and big skirts, I have to tell you that fearlessly on Greg Wallace Shame Day, the spirited kidnap by the pirates (seizing opportunity / to marry with impunity) saw several of them wildly thrown up in a fireman’s lift over muscular shoulders, flowered bums up and legs flailing to the point that my companion wondered whether ENO had provided an intimacy coordinator. Merriment all round. As it should be.
eno.org. 14 more performances till 21 Feb.
Rating 4
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