For Gilbert and Sullivan, over the top is better than under. Too often we cringe as yet another joke is hammered to death and our benign tolerance for G&S shrivels with it. A magician’s skill is required to animate this librettist-composer team’s brilliance. Bring on comedy director Cal McCrystal, fix-it man for some of the silliest, funniest sequences in recent theatre (One Man, Two Guvnors at the National Theatre heads a list of credits stretching to Paddington 2).
His new Iolanthe (1882) for English National Opera, the company’s first performance of the work for 40 years and McCrystal’s own house debut, is one extravagant riot, adroitly conducted by Timothy Henty with a cast, chorus and orchestra in their element, musically and dramatically. McCrystal hurls everything on stage, from slapstick, pratfall and barely bare bottom to aerial spectacle and hare-brained earthly delight. There’s also a small zoo: plastic sheep, pantomime cow, unicorn doubling as water dispenser and twinkle-toed horse. Despite its heavy cargo the production flies.
High praise, first, to the much-missed Paul Brown who died last November, one of the past half-century’s most ingenious designers. His final sets and costumes (with lighting by Tim Mitchell) may elicit the most enduring pleasure: this show has “will run-and-run” stamped all over it. The richly referenced painted scenery captures the feel of a Victorian stage, and looks sumptuous. Act I’s Boucher and Fragonard-style Arcady features a glade of naked nymphs (avert your gaze, Manchester Art Gallery). The Palace of Westminster gleams with gilded detail and gothic lushness.
With Gilbert at his sharpest and Sullivan’s score one of his most varied – hints of Wagner; po-faced counterpoint to announce the Lord Chancellor; a flurry of unforgettable arias – Iolanthe ranks as one of their most successful collaborations. The upper house in Gilbert’s day was an even easier target for lampooning than it is today. McCrystal honours the original text, with scarcely a deviation and only a few well-timed additions, chiefly via two of his regular actors, Richard Leeming as a bendy, moonstruck pageboy and Flick Ferdinando as an impudent, St Trinian’s flower fairy. Only a blond wigged figure on a bicycle – let’s not name him – reminded us of present follies.
To hear the Chancellor’s patter song without contemporary interpolation, delivered with clean, acidic modulation by Andrew Shore, was itself a novelty. This ENO star of longstanding will quickly throw off any first-night hesitation. His reunion with his lost wife Iolanthe was touching and, in the context of a fairyland satire, credible.
Samantha Price’s flighty, earnest Iolanthe, Yvonne Howard’s Valkyrie-like Queen of the Fairies, Barnaby Rea’s tenderly wooden Private Willis, Joanne Appleby’s sweet, daft Leila and Llio Evans’s cheerfully pert Celia all excelled. Throughout, the ENO chorus was at its versatile best. The pair of dippy earls, Ben Johnson (Earl Tolloller) and Ben McAteer (Earl of Mountararat), sang beautifully and have the makings of a classic comic duo. Next, their own show? The tricky warm-up task awarded to actor Clive Mantle as Captain Shaw – a celebrity leader of the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade, 1861-91 – will grow funnier with the run. So yes, it’s over the top. Yes there were a few stony-faced refuseniks. After some initial lone belly laughs – hired in? – the entire auditorium soon rocked with communal mirth, a rarity in any opera house, and a tonic.
Haydn’s music, its very fabric, is steeped in wit: disobedient rhythms, downbeats masquerading as upbeats, strange harmonic twists, silences, mimicry, false endings. Try the “Surprise” Symphony No 94 or the “Joke” quartet, Op 33 No 3. It’s there even in works with no nickname or comic intention. The Jerusalem Quartet played three, early, middle and late, as part of Wigmore Hall’s Haydn String Quartet series, in which various world-class ensembles will perform the entire output. Op 33 No 3, the “Bird”, smiles, sings and chirrups jubilantly, with a characteristically antic rondo last movement.
Continuing an avian theme with Op 64 No 5, “The Lark”, named for its soaring opening phrase, and ending with the buoyant Op 77 No 1, the Jerusalem Quartet showed how a full-bodied, warm sound can work as effectively as a lighter, period-instrument approach (as favoured by a group such as the London Haydn Quartet). In the prestissimo finales of each, the Jerusalem musicians seemed to revel in the finger-twisting challenges, choosing wildly fast tempi. If that led to some reckless intonation, the impact was no more irksome than mud splashes on a downhill bike ride. It intensified a sense of exhilaration unique to Haydn.
Star ratings (out of 5)
Iolanthe ★★★★
Jerusalem Quartet ★★★★
• Iolanthe is in rep at Coliseum, London, until 7 April
