THREE CHEERS FOR A HAT-TRICK OF HILARIOUS TURNS
DEPRIVED of their favourite fare for a year, Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiasts have never had it so good. What, never? Well . . . hardly ever, especially as the effervescent Simon Butteriss is back in three of his best roles.
He is a sharper-edged First Sea Lord than we often hear in HMS Pinafore, which is strongly cast with a memorable Captain (Steven Page — beautiful diction!), a lyrical Ralph (David Menezes), a bell-like Josephine (Caroline Kennedy) and a motherly Buttercup (Mae Heydorn).
The added responsibility of directing falls to Butteriss in The Mikado and Patience, where he was asked to separate the chorus off — his solution, to place them behind a decorated scrim, works well. He was also requested to un-Japanese the characters in The Mikado, which for me removes a whole layer of comedy. No matter — the result is so hilarious that critical faculties are blunted.
Butteriss’s boyish Ko-Ko reveals a ‘little list’ skewering all the current public figures that Gilbert himself would target. Pish-Tush (Matthew Kellett) has more to do than usual, including sweeping the stage, and the whole thing has a rather colonial look.
Gaynor Keeble’s Victorian grand dame of a Katisha is truly awe-inspiring, Matthew Siveter’s Pooh-Bah is lordliness itself, Emily Vine is a touching Yum-Yum, Catrine Kirkman a characterful Pitti-Sing, Bruce Graham a sonorous Mikado. David Horton as Nanki-Poo takes a while to warm up to his best.
Several of these singers return in Patience, where Butteriss’s swooningly Swinburne-like Bunthorne is perfumed perfection and some Pre-Raphaelite spice flavours the comedy nicely. Vine gets the innocence of the title character just right and Siveter is a nimble-footed, fine-toned rival poet.
Keeble’s gloriously over-the-top Lady Jane is joined by the equally lovesick Kirkman, Kate Lowe and Phoebe Smith, with the Dragoon Guards well officered by Graham as the Colonel, Stephen Godward as the Major and Peter Van Hulle as the Duke. In both his productions, Butteriss gets everyone moving delightfully.
James Hendry conducts a Covidreduced orchestra (one-to-a-part strings) with brio, so that ensembles sparkle; but serious moments are not short-changed.
The festival moves on to Harrogate from Sunday and the productions are now being streamed on gsopera.tv.