In Iolanthe, the Lord Chancellor’s man got all the laughs in wild physical theatre his equivalent here is tap-dancing nine-year-old “Midshipmite” Rufus Bateman (13-year-old Johnny Jackson will go through the routines in four performances).
Learn where you don’t get the laughs and pare down.īut it’s worth it for the delights which do work. I don’t object to the towelled beefcake coming up from down below, but not sure there’s a reason, unless it be to keep Ossian Huskinson behind for eye-candy during the wonderful glee that follows ( pictured above with Marcus Farnsworth and Elgan Llŷr Thomas).
Stop the incidental business when a main character is singing as when our captain’s daughter bewails her sorry lot while dad fails to help plump and pleasing bumboat woman Little Buttercup adroitly off the ship. First step: remove that bent-over, tottering Porter aunt she’s an ageist embarrassment, and not worth the final gag that despatches her. Unlike his all-fizzing ENO Iolanthe, though, McCrystal’s Pinafore doesn’t always work. But it’s even more classically compact, rolls along beautifully under conductor Chris Hopkins' more-than-able steering from a sentimental-brisk Overture to the final happy chorus (the late Charles Mackerras would have approved), and hits all its marks deftly. When I was lucky enough to share a pre-performance talk with the great Mike Leigh, he declared that Pinafore wasn’t a patch on its successor, The Pirates of Penzance, which he was then staging for ENO. Anything else that needs to be said is wickedly stitched in by McCrystal’s extra dialogue and visual japes (yes, not-so-great-Britain's Horror Clown makes an appearance).
And that “if you want to rise to the top of the tree…Stick close to your desks and never go to sea/And you all may be rulers of the Queen’s na-vee” (words which my 10-year-old performing self didn’t quite grasp, but which, now that I’m older, sadder and wiser, I see can be applied to just about every cabinet minister unfit for the sphere he or she dominates).
That love should level all ranks but doesn’t (so much for levelling up). That a British sailor’s “energetic fist should be ready to resist/A dictatorial word” (violence for equality).
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