Ruddigore
Opera North, touring
What is wrong with me? I kept asking myself that question as I endured the two hours and 40 minutes of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore in the Grand Theatre, Leeds, while most of the audience rocked with laughter and regularly burst into delighted applause. I hadn’t originally intended to go, but the reviews were so unanimously ecstatic that I finally decided that I’d better make the effort. This show has been compared to Jonathan Miller’s famous Mikado at ENO, and that is something I see whenever I can and enjoy enormously — but the musical merits of that work apart (they are very high), Miller’s production is a brilliantly sly commentary on the piece, while in no way reducing its stature.
Jo Davies, the director of this Ruddigore, hasn’t attempted any particular ‘take’ on it. Hers is, if anything, a thoroughly traditional G & S show, distinguished by its gusto and by many lively, imaginative touches, such as, during the Overture, a silent movie-style narration with faded photographs, Edwardian period (roughly), of the chief characters. So far, so good: fairly funny, and though the melodies are not first-rate Sullivan, they are agreeable. But when the curtain goes up and the action begins, it’s immediately clear what kind of evening it is going to be. The pure heroine Rose Maybud — a satire, of course, on pure heroines; actually, she is a little schemer — is given a pastel-shaded performance by Amy Freston. She has more voice than she uses here, as I know from having seen her fairly often. But the cast has mainly opted, or been told, to sing in that thin-toned, piping style which suggests that sex would be out of the question, for physiological reasons.
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