The ENO cast © Craig Fuller
English National Opera / Natalie Murray Beale
London Coliseum, 2nd December 2024
The Pirates of Penzance (1879) may not be the most successful Gilbert & Sullivan—that honour probably rests with The Mikado—but it is certainly one of them and, to my mind, the silliest. A most unconvincing collective of ne’er-do-wells and failed cutthroats (to a man suckers for an orphan sob story!) calmly allow one of their number, Frederic (an ‘apprentice’), to leave their enterprise as he comes of age, only to change their minds when they realise that, born on February 29th, he has only reached his fifth birthday! In the meantime, Frederic encounters the daughters and wholly female entourage of the ‘modern major-general’ Stanley and becomes enamoured of the lovely Mabel, much to the chagrin of the pirates’ maid-of-all-works, Ruth. Inevitably, the pirates catch up with the Stanley’s group, promises are made and broken, the local—even more cowardly—police force (their lot not being a happy one) to arrest the pirates and roundly routed the process. Of course, everything works out fine, no-one’s throat is cut, the pirates—whose nobility of attitude is also accounted for—pair up with the ladies and all (mostly) ends well.
As in more than one G&S opera (The Yeomen of the Guard), not everyone gets the ending they deserve and in this revival of Mike Leigh’s crisp 2015 production, directed by Sarah Tipple, the final isolation of Ruth (touchingly sung and acted by Gaynor Keeble) is poignantly depicted. This was Leigh’s first foray into opera, and it still brushes up quite well, less edgy than a Miller production, and full of fun. The design dissonance between Alison Chitty’s geometric, poster-painted stage designs, enhanced by Ian Jackson-French’s lighting (revised from Paul Pyant’s original), and the traditional riot of taffeta of the costumes.
(Isabel Peters as Mabel, William Morgan as Frederic, (c) Craig Fuller)
The star of the show, however, was debutant tenor William Morgan as the engaging Frederic, full of ardour, honour (the subtitle is ‘The Slave of Duty’, after all), and impeccable comic timing. He managed the growth from innocence to awareness very credibly in his onstage relationships with Ruth, increasingly unwillingly, and Isabelle Peters’ lightly sparkling Mabel. Her aria of exhortation to the trepidatious police troop was nicely done. Peters, an upcoming Harewood Artist, was offset tellingly by two of their most experienced hands, John Savournin as the Pirate King and Richard Suart, the very model of a G&S major-general.
(James Cresswell and ENO’s Coppers’ chorus, (c) Craig Fuller)
The other cast members were uniformly fine: Henry Neill as the Pirates’ lieutenant, Samuel; James Cresswell as the wonderfully ponderous Police Sergeant, though his Cornish accent was somewhere to the west of the Scillies; plus Bethan Langford (a member of ENO’s recent Iolanthe and Pinafore productions), Anna Elizabeth Cooper and Ella Kirkpatrick as Mabel’s sisters. The ENO Chorus and Orchestra were on their usual top form under Natalie Murray Beale’s nicely judged, light direction. Commencing with four performances in the first week of December 2024, the revival returns to January 2025 for 11 further nights to an afternoon outing on February 21st. Do catch it if you can.