Grand, Leeds
*****
by Tim Ashley
Sunday 31 January 2010 21.30
Cheered to the rafters ... Hal Cazalet and Amy Freston in Ruddigore.
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
It was once fashionable to be rude about Ruddigore, Gilbert and Sullivan's complex take on gothic melodrama and Victorian morbidity. Before its premiere in 1887, Gilbert expressed perplexity over the apparently heavyweight nature of Sullivan's score and it subsequently became a cliche to state that the work was "too operatic" for its own good. Nowadays of course it's those same uncertainties of tone that appeal to us. Ruddigore is part social satire, part horror story and its greatness lies as much in its ability to move and scare us as in its potential to make us laugh.
Jo Davies's terrific new production for Opera North is strong on the work's ambiguities. The basic premise – that the aristocratic Murgatroyds are cursed to commit an evil deed a day – allows Gilbert to focus his satire on the criminality of the powerful. Davies updates the operetta from the Napoleonic era to the aftermath of the first world war. The ghost of Sir Roderick (Steven Page) stalks his successors in full military rig, which hints at his family's involvement in the carnage. Sir Ruthven's (Grant Doyle) often-cut aria about "all the crimes one sees in the Times" acquires an extra verse about MPs' expenses, which was cheered to the rafters by the first-night audience.
Davies's understanding of Gilbert's attack on moral hypocrisy is also marvellously acute. Sir Ruthven (Grant Doyle) and Sir Despard (Richard Burkhard), like Jekyll and Hyde alter egos, swivel between amorality and cringe-making respectability. Rose Maybud (Amy Freston) looks like the young Wallis Simpson but glides from man to man motivated by the prissiest ideals of etiquette and decorum. Heather Shipp's Mad Margaret, wheeling the detritus of her life about in a pram, is the victim of a world only fractionally less crazed than she is. Wickedly funny yet unsettling, Shipp's performance is typical of the evening as a whole.
The singing is consistently fine: Doyle, gauchely attractive, and the glorious sounding Freston are outstanding. The occasional lack of panache in John Wilson's conducting will probably vanish during the run. Davies's treatment of the hauntings leaves you open-mouthed, though someone should do something about the over-amplified thunder that obliterates the altogether creepier goings-on in the score. That apart, however, this is one of the great Gilbert and Sullivan stagings – on a par with Jonathan Miller's famous production of The Mikado and just as worthy of cult status in years to come.
