EMPYREAN ENTERTAINMENT; CLUTCH IT TO YOUR FAINTING BOSOM NOW!
It should be on prescription, so healing of life’s frustrations is this Charles Court Opera revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s silliest show. John Savournin’s production is lyrically and melodically rendered by nine fabulous classical voices, each of them attached – in truly rare providence – to a matchless physical wit. A dogged audience for the Wiltons’ first night braved strikebound London (not to bad with 453 and 205 buses and Shadwell on the overground) and were richly rewarded.
Who wouldn’t rejoice in Matthew Kellett’s Bunthorne, leaping around like an emotionally incontinent meerkat? Or Catrine Kirman’s fed-up Lady Jane calculating her declining looks while nicking a packet of crisps and stamping on a fashion magazine, Lady Angela impersonating “a poisoned hawk”, or the painfully earnest transformation of three hapless “fleshly” grenadiers into lipsticked and befrilled aesthetes? Every scene is a fresh joy, the music of course quite lovely and the patter irresistible (“by no endeavour can a magnet ever attract a silver churn”: we’ve all been that magnet once).
But Patience’s other USP is its reckless, relentless antiromantic satire on every yearningly overcomplicated feelings-junkie , and every fashionable idolatry of preening poseurs and loghorreic pretenders. G&S were guying the rival aestheticisms of exotic Wilde and Swinburne and folksy William Morris, with Bunthorne’s agonized pallid “Hollow hollow hollow” exoticism in red lipstick, and Matthew Siveter’s cod-folksong “Hey willow waley O” . But as each man contemplates the burden of his own irresistible beauty and genius, it fits nicely into to the age of Russell Brand, Justin Bieber, Will Self, David Tennant… name your own.
And Savournin pops in some nice up-to-date Gilbertisms for the cultured Bunthorne (Sartre/Sinatra, WSG would appreciate that ) and modernizes the determined simplicity of Grosvenor renouncing his poetic crown with lines about Adidas and SportsDirect.
It’s all a joy, just immaculately done both artistically and comedically, properly high powered on its tiny scale. David Eaton makes the lone piano as expressive as any orchestra; properly beautiful is Catriona Hewitson’s marvellous, birdlike song and baffled emotions as buxom put-upon Patience. The Grenadiers are magnificently manly, the lovelorn ladies pinnacles of elegant ridiculousness. No joke is lost , none milked too long, no gesture wasted. Simon Bejer’s jolly saloon-bar set frames it smartly. It’s a beauty. Six more performances, one a matinee. Enjoy.
Wiltons.org.uk to 13 sept
rating 5
theatreCat 