Gilbert & Sullivan : The Pirates of Penzance
Chorus of The Pirates of Penzance
Scottish Opera Orchestra
Derek Clark
Scottish Opera brings its 50th anniversary season to a close with a bright and witty production by Martin Lloyd-Evans of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. It's not the first time they've wandered into this territory, Iolanthe has been staged more than once, but this venture is more successful, to my mind, than previous ones, with hardly a dull moment in the show. It's a co-production with D'Oyly Carte, so the staging is comparatively traditional, but not at all old-fashioned.
They've also managed successfully to avoid the common pitfall with light opera/operetta, which is not the music, but all the bits in-between. I have a painful memory of a production of La Belle Hélène at ENO many years ago which was one of the dullest things I've ever witnessed, because all of the dialogue was falling flat as the proverbial pancake, and completely spoiling the marvellous music. I don't consider Pirates to be in the same class (of all the G&S, The Mikado is my favourite, by quite some way), but at least here the pacing was spot on, flowing smoothly from song to speech and back again, with few dead passages. In fact, the only bit where I found my attention really wandering was during "Sighing softly to the river", and the production did its best with what seems like a wholly extraneous number.
As usual with G&S, the romantic leads are slightly ridiculous, and it can be difficult to pull them off properly. Stephanie Corley managed a nicely gung-ho Mabel, rather than being vapourish, and her coloratura was well-handled. Nicholas Sharratt was a bit light-voiced as Frederic, I'd have liked more ring to his sound, but he handled the character well, with just a hint of tongue-in-cheek to offset Frederic's absurd priggishness.
However, the main interest lies with the other characters. Richard Suart was moderately amusing as the Major-General, but didn't quite pull off his famous patter song. Rosie Aldridge was a fairly restrained Ruth, though I'll admit the authors didn't give her much to work with, unlike some of their other, more extravagant contralto characters. However, Graeme Broadbent and Steven Page were both excellent, the former as an ineffable Police Sergeant (distinct hints of John Cleese in his Monty Python days about him), and the latter as a forthright and surprisingly urbane Pirate King.
Most enjoyable of all was the chorus, especially the ladies, crisp and smiling, delightfully silly. "When the foeman bares his steel" was particularly entertaining, with the girls cheerfully and obliviously exhorting the cringing policemen on to sanguinary death and glory, while Broadbent tries to herd his recalcitrant troops towards the fray rather than away from it, as they would obviously prefer. Clark and the orchestra provided solid support throughout. A good, fun evening, all told.
[Next : 25th May]
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