From
February 7, 2010
Opera North’s 1920s opera is an inspired revival that merrily papers over the cracks of Gilbert and Sullivan’s first flop
In January 1887, Ruddigore followed Gilbert and Sullivan’s smash hit of 22 months earlier, The Mikado, mustering only 288 performances compared with its predecessor’s 672, then the second longest run in British theatre history. The New York Times declared it “Their First Flat Failure”, adding portentously that the operetta’s name “is decidedly against it”. Originally entitled Ruddygore, it — hilariously — became acceptable for the Victorians by the substitution of the offending “y” with an innocuous “i”. Gilbert must have been chuckling all the way to the bank.
Ruddigore has remained on the margins of the Savoy Opera repertoire, which makes Opera North’s production all the more welcome. At Leeds’s Grand Theatre, the director Jo Davies and the designer Richard Hudson have achieved the near miracle of concocting the most original and convincing G&S revival since Jonathan Miller’s “Roaring Twenties” Mikado for English National Opera in 1986.
Davies and Hudson also opt for the 1920s, evoking the melodrama of the silent-movie era during the overture — Sullivan’s atmospheric and operatic original, rather than Geoffrey Toye’s usually recorded potpourri of the operetta’s hit tunes for the 1920 D’Oyly Carte revival — and screening the back story of Dame Hannah’s abortive engagement and marriage to Sir Roderic Murgatroyd, 21st Baronet of Ruddigore, who succumbs to the Witch’s Curse of a violent death for failing to commit at least one crime a day. In one of Gilbert’s most contrived denouements, his ghost, having emerged from his portrait to spook the incumbent baronet, is brought back to life to be reconciled with his former betrothed, now the guardian aunt of the operetta’s ditzy heroine, Rose Maybud, whose fast-shifting morals are guided by a book of etiquette.
Even in its revised form, Ruddigore betrays the formulaic routine that was to bedevil the later Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke, and lacks the consistent musical inspiration of The (dramatically flawed) Gondoliers.
Opera North’s staging successfully pastes over the compositional and theatrical cracks of Act I, set in the Cornwall village of Rederring, where Rose can’t make up her mind between the claims of two potential bridegrooms: Robin Oakapple/Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd and his foster brother, Dick Dauntless. She is also the intended prey of Sir Despard — baronet in default of Sir Ruthven, his older brother — who plans to fulfil the dictates of the curse by abducting and forcibly marring her. The tone set by Davies and Hudson’s elegant sets and costumes hovers between EF Benson and PG Wodehouse, all tongue-in-cheek lampooning, with an ever-present band of bridesmaids eagerly showering confetti at the slightest hint of imminent wedding bells. Davies has worked hard getting opera singers to deliver the dialogue snappily, with cut-glass diction, but the first half still drags a bit, thanks to Gilbert’s convoluted plotting and less than side-splittingly funny dialogue. The improbabilities and characters are gently sent up rather than grotesquely caricatured — underplaying the satire nearly always yields dividends in G&S.
Hudson’s magnificent set and Sullivan’s brilliant parodies of the spook scenes of Weber’s Der Freischütz and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman bring the show into thrilling focus, however. Sir Roderic’s hit number, When the Night Wind Howls, is thrillingly delivered by Steven Page, and the other musical highlight is his duet with Anne Marie Owens’s uncaricatured, touchingly musical Hannah. Although Rose is a pale rerun of The Mikado’s Yum-Yum, Amy Freston’s light soubrette simpers and sings sweetly, while Grant Doyle is a dashing, young-Alan-Bates-lookalike Sir Ruthven and Richard Burghard manages the transition from snarling bad baronet to urbane bad baronet’s younger bro with nice eyebrow-curling urbanity. Richard Angas is a joy as Robin/Ruthven’s amiable manservant, Adam Goodheart.
Heather Shipp makes a brave stab at a silent-film tragedy-queen Mad Margaret without redeeming one of Gilbert’s most implausible creations. John Wilson, a “light opera” specialist, could have whipped up the tempo of the patter songs, but the pace should tighten during the run. When it does, it will be a classic.
