Iolanthe

by W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan

seen at the Coliseum on 24 February 2018

Somehow, in contrast to most attributions in which the composer is listed first and the librettist afterwards (if at all), it is hard to break the conventional reference to 'Gilbert & Sullivan'. In their collaboration, the words (at least to an anglophone audience - and perhaps there are few others) are as important as the music, and the phrase and its initials 'G&S' simply too entrenched. I did it for Pirates but have reverted to type here.

This production, ENO's first in forty years, is directed by Cal McCrystal and conducted (at this performance) by Chris Hopkins from an edition prepared from the original manuscript by Timothy Henty (who conducts most performances in this season). It features Samantha Price as Iolanthe, Yvonne Howard as the Queen f the Fairies, Andrew Shore as the Lord Chancellor, Ellie Laugharne as Phyllis and Marcus Farnsworth as Strephon. The designer was Paul Brown, his last work in a distinguished career, as unfortunately he died late last year.

G&S is froth and nonsense at one level, but with often quite biting satire amidst the jollity. The story is just the scaffolding for a series of Gilbertian shafts to be released at the law, the peerage, the pastoral idyll, and even, self-referentially, operatic conventions. Here, the action is wittily presented within a faux-Victorian proscenium which frames extravagant painted flats of flowers or trees in the first scenes, conveniently reducing the vast Coliseum stage and allowing for a wonderful coup de theatre when a steam train bursts through the pastoral backdrop to deliver a posse of preposterously bemedalled and becloaked peers. Meanwhile Phyllis and Strephon are dressed in improbable eighteenth century Arcadian shepherdess and shepherd mode, except that their clothes are pure white with Delft-blue Arcadian scenes printed on them. (Strephon's costume, furthermore, ends at his knees - his calves and feet are bare, presumably reinforcing the idea that he is only half a fairy from the top down.) In he second act, more robust sets represent the yard and the interior of the Palace of Westminster. 

Cal McCrystal and his team did not want to update the jokes, realising that for the most part they are surprisingly topical anyway, but they could not resist a Boris Johnson lookalike among the peers, and a number of visual jokes referencing some well-known (if old-fashioned) comedy patter. The largest interventions here were a number of silent gags which were at times extremely funny, but were also occasionally a bit too distracting. Richard Leeming, a gawky young actor of fearless physical dexterity, played a non-singing (and largely non-speaking) role as the Lord Chancellor's page, and came gloriously to the fore in the Act Two trio 'Faint heart never won fair lady'.

The stagework was clever, the costumes suitably frivolous, the singing fine and the diction clear (at least for the fourth row of the stalls - I am not sure about the further reaches of the vast Coliseum auditorium: but surtitles were provided). Andrew Shore in particular made a fine Lord Chancellor; perhaps the deeper male voice is the best for projection, especially when speaking rather than singing.

An enjoyable romp.