Gilbert and Sullivan’s Gondoliers at their most joyously exuberant
Of all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, The Gondoliers is arguably the most exuberant, the most musically inventive, and even the most topically satirical. Scottish Opera’s new staging by Stuart Maunder (which comes to the Hackney Empire having toured Scotland last year) bursts with energy. Its opening scene in Venice – 20 minutes’ uninterrupted music, as the brother gondoliers Marco and Giuseppe choose their brides – is without parallel in G&S, scored with a near-Mozartian subtlety and Rossinian wit, here driven by conductor Derek Clark with perfect tempi.
Dick Bird’s clever designs provide an apt backdrop for the absurd contortions of the plot, the apotheosis of the old babies-swapped-at-birth story, in which one of two gondoliers was married at birth to the infant daughter of the king of Barataria, but no one knows which. (Cue endless jokes in Gilbert’s super-witty lyrics about being bisected by a profound catastrophe, and sparkling Sullivan ensembles in which quiet calm deliberation disentangles every knot.)
William Morgan as an ardent Marco and Mark Nathan as a rather Dishy Rishi-like Giuseppe make a lively pair of gondoliers, projecting the text strongly, at their best in the energetic numbers, although Marco’s famous Take a pair of sparkling eyes is a little suspect these days as he sings of “dainty fingerettes”. As their brides Gianetta and Tessa, Charlie Drummond is a bright and focused soprano, while Sioned Gwen Davies is almost too rich an alto for Tessa; Sullivan sculpts different music for their two contrasted characters with unerring skill.
Satire arrives in the shape of the down-at-heel Duke of Plaza-Toro and his train, which in the case of Yvonne Howard’s imposing Duchess consists of an 8ft-wide dress that’s managed around the stage with remarkable dexterity. The Duke’s daughter Casilda (Catriona Hewitson, who sings fervently, but is given a puzzling black eyepatch) and his servant Luiz (Dan Shelvey, vocally outstanding) are inevitably in love.
Richard Stuart has been singing the Duke since time immemorial, and does so with crackling clarity, even if the sound is not quite what it was. He is allowed one updated lyric about contemporary events, which is typically funny, but the opportunity is missed to drive home the relevance of his satire about high-level grafting for income: if you don’t get a good laugh today from a line about politicians being “open to conviction”, something is missing. Surely a sharpening of the dialogue throughout would not spoil the spirit of the show.
In act two, as the gondoliers are translated to Barataria to share the kingship (in a bisected costume, parodying Ingres), they ennoble all their fellow gondoliers and the jokes are all about equality, another subject that could be enhanced today. But as Ben McAteer’s imposing Don Alhambra points out, when everyone is somebody then no one’s anybody. (He doesn’t mention levelling-up.) Cue the denouement provided by Inez, the King’s foster-mother (Cheryl Forbes, unnecessarily lampooned in the torture chamber here), that the monarch is actually Luiz – so he can have Casilda and the gondoliers can have their brides, and all is well.
The glorious uplift of this production is provided by the excellent chorus and the extensive choreography by Isabel Baquero: Venice with a touch of?? flamenco, quite the most successful I have seen in any G&S show, bringing a final touch of glamour to a fun evening.
Until April 2; hackneyempire.co.uk