Cal McCrystal’s joyous production is back at the Coliseum after five years and looking as fresh as new paint. It is not just because of topical additions to the cornucopia of gags – at one point we see a Nadine Dorries lookalike vainly beseeching entrance to the House of Lords – but because McCrystal and his team recognise that the secret of Iolanthe lies less in its satirical bite than in its spiralling absurdity. This is a world in which, rather as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mortals and immortals feverishly interact. Where HMS Pinafore looked too frail a barque to contain McCrystal’s boundless invention, this Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera is robust enough to absorb pantomime animals and Carry On-style double entendres.
The fairies, in this version, are lubricious pixies who can’t wait to get their hands on the bottle-throwing peers, who resemble a massed version of the Bullingdon Club. The visual and verbal jokes also come thick and fast. When the Lord Chancellor’s page tries to muscle in on the trio “Faint heart never won fair lady” he is literally sent flying. Attempting to squeeze his lordship’s foot into a recalcitrant shoe, the same page is asked, “Have you got the horn?”, to which he cheekily replies: “No, it’s just the way I’m sitting.”
If the titivations to Gilbert’s libretto work, it is because Sullivan’s musical values are
largely respected. Chris Hopkins conducts buoyantly, reminding us of the score’s fleeting Wagnerian echoes, and even if the love duet, None Shall Part Us, is accompanied by an excess of comic business, Marcus Farnsworth’s Strephon and Ellie Laugharne’s Phyllis still preserve its amorous intensity. Samantha Price as Iolanthe renders her climactic ballad with genuine poignancy and John Savournin as a much-younger-than-usual Lord Chancellor crisply articulates every syllable, while Catherine Wyn-Rogers as an airborne fairy queen and Ben McAteer as a closeted Earl of Mountararat are in terrific voice.
This production also grasps the point that Sullivan’s music is a permanent invitation to the dance. Lizzi Gee’s choreography adds much to the evening’s sparkle, with the tripping fairies suggesting a tipsy bacchanalia, the peers processing with martial fervour and the Palace of Westminster taking on the louche air of the Hammersmith Palais. It all makes for a joyous evening that gives Gilbert and Sullivan the best shot-in-the-arm since Jonathan Miller’s production of The Mikado.
• At the London Coliseum until 25 October
