If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise – for there’s ne’re a silk gown in sight. In Sasha Regan’s production, William Schwenck Gilbert’s story is told as a kind of midsummer night’s dream of a boy scout’s camp concert party in which all characters are played by young men in shorts (the women’s parts with their shorts rolled up). By this device the characters appear more familiar and much of the silliness of the plot is laid bare – and all the more fun for that – whilst new sightlines open up on the objects of Gilbert’s satire. In a world where, at the whim of a despot, flirting carries a death penalty and various other misdemeanours are punishable by a variety of ‘humorous’ and ‘lingering’ forms of execution, the sight of a forest of hairy legs is hardly likely to stand out as the cause of offense. We can laugh at the grim paradox of, ‘who chops the heads off the people who don’t chop off their own?
I suppose that it is the absurdity of setting and plot that accounts for the opera’s ongoing popularity. It is a kind of ‘dark matter’ Neverland where absurdities from the visible world can be pilloried free from the censor’s blue pencil and popular sentiment’s censure. And of course the (for the most part) jaunty score of Arthur Sullivan, which with a musical irony matches the libretto in satirizing hypocrisy, cruelty and corruption.
In the absence of any overriding rationale, an ‘all this that or the other’ cast is likely to trigger a certain queasiness of expectation, but under Ms Regan’s eye any off piste larking about is an easily dispensed with worry. ‘Camp’ is, for the most part, limited to the canvas sort with any ‘girliness’ characterised by well-observed detail rather than panto style parody though the fussing and giggling of the ensemble women tends to come across as the honking of so many excited geese. The leading ladies, Yum Yum (Alan Richardson) and Katisha (Alex Weatherhill) are sympathetically, indeed touchingly played by both men. In the latter case, because she is clearly not an unattractive older woman our sympathy for Katisha’s situation is slightly realigned.
The list song of those ‘who would not be missed’ (As some day it may happen) by the loss of a head is (as is often the case) updated by the inclusion of some present-day subjects of derision and popular censure (to the general approval of the Theatre Royal patrons). That amiable bundle of contradictions, Ko-Ko (David McKechnie) is played as just that and it is tempting to think that he represents something wider in the great scheme of things that is late nineteenth century Britain.
This is as imaginative, clever, witty and unstuffy a production of Gilbert and Sullivan as you are likely to find and may be just the thing to tempt people who think comic opera is not for them. ★★★★☆ Graham Wyles 20th April 2017
