In defence of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Grand Duke

Artistic partnerships are elusive things. The best – where two creative personalities somehow inspire or goad each other to do better than their individual best – can seem so natural that they’re almost easier to identify by their absence. No one’s queuing up to revive Richard Rodgers’s Rex (lyrics by Sheldon Harnick). Pretending to rate Band on the Run above Revolver is a fun way to wind up boomers, but c’mon – honestly? With Gilbert and Sullivan, meanwhile, recordings have given us the chance to rediscover Grundy and Sullivan’s Haddon Hall and Gilbert and Cellier’s The Mountebanks: turkeys both.

Then there’s the sad case of The Grand Duke, and that might be the saddest of all because, while it’s certainly by Gilbert and Sullivan, somehow it isn’t quite Gilbert-and-Sullivan. It was their final collaboration, and they were both pulling their punches where once they’d struck sparks off each other. Gilbert’s once-tight plotting runs away with him; Sullivan glows where previously he’d glittered – and the big comic song is about sausage rolls. It’s an artistic marriage that’s staying together for the sake of the kids – or in this case, the balance sheet of the Savoy Theatre. Gilbert called the result ‘an ugly misshapen little brat’.

Well, it was brat summer at the 30th International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton. There’s a gloriously homespun vibe about the whole festival, from the gift shop (where you can buy a hand-knitted Captain Corcoran) to the fans in Ruddigore T-shirts necking pints outside the Old Club House. Don’t be misled. The festival often showcases G&S productions from around the world, and this one-off revival of The Grand Duke was performed by the Savoy Company of Philadelphia.