A rare treat for G&S lovers

RUDDIGORE, Lowry

THIS is more like it. After Tuesday night’s slightly low-key performance of Puccini’s Bohemian rhapsody, Opera North gets it pretty well bang on for good old Gilbert and Sullivan.

Opera Companies, and especially Opera North, have over the last 20 years or so established reputations for letting their hair down and having fun occasionally. The usual result is upbeat versions of foreign classics, little known comic works or even Broadway shows.

This time it is Gilbert and Sullivan’s rarely-performed ghosts-and-reluctant-duty comedy, in which a cursed baronet must commit a crime every day or be tortured to death by the ghosts of his ancestors who similarly failed to live, literally, on the proceeds of crime...

No really, it’s funny, packed with Gilbert’s dry wit and Sullivan’s catchy little tunes — and there is even a lyric reference, courtesy of Richard Stilgoe, to duck islands, video porn and MPs expenses.

The show is rarely performed because it takes the sort of resources for which only opera companies are really set up: strong singers, large-scale sets and fine orchestral playing. And usually it comes a poor also-ran to the top G&S favourites

But here director Jo Davies and set designer Richard Hudson have done G&S proud, offering a fine prom with sea stretching off into the distance in act one and a terrific, wildly-skewed perspective study in act two, from which the ghostly ancestors brilliantly descend to torment the non-criminal Sir Ruthven (the excellent Grant Doyle).

The evening’s only downsides are courtesy of Gilbert and Sullivan themselves, whose first act lags a little at times despite a brilliantly silly, silent-movie vamp-style Mad Margaret (Heather Shipp, clearly having the time of her life) and the top-hat and cane villainy of the previously-cursed Despard (Richard Burkhard).

What Opera North gets absolutely right is the tone of the evening: sometimes these opera company updates of famous works go too far and create camp, unfunny monsters, devoid of energy and overwhelmed by poor humour.

This one is pitch-perfect, from the professional bridesmaids who break into song whenever anyone hints at marriage, through the silent-movie opening, to the quirky little dance of Despard and Margaret and the marvellous patter song of the superb second act. This is a little treasure house of very guilty pleasures.