Jolly boating weather

Besides those crazy Wagnerians, it may surprise you to hear that the most passionate opera lovers I know are the G&S gang, who differ from them in every way (and are infinitely preferable as a species, despite Germaine Greer’s charming characterisation of them as “racist, right-wing Olde Englande nerdery” ― actually there’s much more of a tragic Lib Dem vibe about them, if you ask me). Consumed as they are with sheer unaffected delight that their beloved pieces are being performed at all, their boundless joy is an amazing thing to behold. And English Touring Opera is giving them a treat with this ten-venue (it used to be many more, of course) tour from Truro to Durham ― and it’s pretty good for those of us who merely like the stuff in an unfanatical sort of way, too.

The Gondoliers, one of the pair’s last collaborations, is a sunny, dancey piece, with the lightest Offenbachian (of a thoroughly Italianate sort) feeling in the music, though obviously without too much of the old ooh-la-la. And this show is startlingly gorgeous to look at, Michael Pavelka’s picture-frame set bursting with colour and movement, very fancy pseudo-18th-century costumes by Laura Jane Stanfield, all looking a lot more spanking and jollier than the grunge-chic we usually get. 

This is the one about the staunch republican boat-chaps who wind up as joint kings of the fantasy island of Barataria through the usual mistaken-identity foolishness, with some resultant mild laughs at the absurdities of both feudal order and egalitarianism, and the familiar feeling that Gilbert is amusing himself at everyone’s expense without being actually satirical or much wanting to change anything. There is a definite piquancy in the two-kings lark (a result of a baby mix-up, meaning nobody knows which of the boys is the king, sigh, you know…) and how it reflects G&S’s own situation, neither of them known in his own right but always as part of the firm. Whether as the director claims the piece is still “relevant” to a world “grappling with inequality, privilege and the structures of power” is another matter; I would sincerely hope that the adamantine strength of the Savoy operas is that they can never be relevant to anything, and Gilbert would rather die than be anything so tawdry and unambitious as “thought-provoking” ― but I guess you have to write something in the programme book, and that’s where it stays.

What ambushes you every time with these pieces is how staggeringly much more work than necessary these guys put into them, more plot, more variety and bubbling superfluity of music, more tangential nonsense, more character (and caricature), more sheer wit and linguistic intricacy ― they really could have got away with a lot less, but thank God they did it, because they were the model for so much of 20th-century musical theatre before that shrivelled to its current gestural levels of creativity. And director Liam Steel, a choreographer by training, takes up the challenge with a staging that demands as much of its singers as anything by Cole Porter in comic acting, energy and sheer athleticism as well as in their core competency. If it wasn’t so well rehearsed and slick it would be exhausting and slightly alarming to watch, the ten leads and ten chorus hardly still for a moment through any of their songs, and coming together for a bunch of big production numbers that wouldn’t disgrace any stage, culminating in the furiously energetic (and reprised) “Dance a Cachucha”, with intricate steps and a lot of smart tambourine work.

I guess Gondoliers doesn’t have as much of an obvious heart as some of the others, but Gilbert still hits you with surprising glimpses of the sad romanticism that emerge from his crusty, distanced irony: the partings of lovers sundered by fatuous “duty”, or a pithy way of nailing love’s sad evanescence, as he subtly does in Marco’s famous ditty “Take a pair of sparkling eyes”. The supposed satires of royal flummery, humbugging pseudo-democrats, celebs for sale ― all the time-honoured targets ― raise fairly frequent wintry smiles and the occasional guffaw; in a curious way, Gilbert presents the world as entirely fake and hypocritical, everyone on the make, and so on, but in a basically good-natured way that implies that anything else would probably be worse ― I suppose in fact the essence of British complacency, which worked pretty well in 1880 though perhaps less so now when nearly everything is so far beyond parody. 

As Tom Lehrer noted, all the words and music signify absolutely nothing, but that doesn’t stop them being highly engaging, Gilbert’s clever conceits that snowball into great, tartly expressed ensembles as much as Sullivan’s endless supply of vaguely pastichey styles. The performers are uniformly attractive, the handful of young things as ever rather blandly cute, the oldsters always with more meat: Matthew Siveter’s devil-incarnate Grand Inquisitor, an instantly recognisable crazed,elevated jobsworth, Phil Wilcox and Lauren Young as the shameless Plaza Toros, shysters of the Neil/Christine Hamilton stamp but blessed unlike them with self-awareness, charm and some recognisable human characteristics. Down in the pit Jack Ridley pilots his band with the right understated discipline, lively and jovial without ever risking anything too exciting.          

All this innocent merriment provokes a reaction of thunderous adulation at the end (and the curtain call is decently performed, for a change). English Touring Opera could find itself a whole new fan club if it does more of this kind of thing, and then everyone would start saying how healthy and happy audiences were looking — which would be novel. 

On tour until May 21st ― www.englishtouringopera.com