Ruddigore – Opera Holland Park, London

Music: Arthur Sullivan

Libretto: WS Gilbert

Director: John Savournin

Of the fourteen comic operas written by Gilbert and Sullivan, Ruddigore has never achieved the popularity or recognition of some of their other works. Partly that is down to its coming straight after the success of The Mikado. But it’s also perhaps because the subject of its satire, the Victorian melodrama, is not as universal as the digs at social and political classes that infuse some of their other works. Unfortunately, that also makes it harder to understand why it should be revived today.

Still, there is much trademark G&S whimsy at play in the story. It opens with a troupe of “professional bridesmaids” lamenting that there have been no weddings for them to attend, before moving into a tale of a cursed line of baronets, the ghosts of whom torment the current title holder.

Llio Evans’s Rose Maybud, the village’s most eligible maiden, has eyes for local farmer Robin (Matthew Kellett), unaware that he also fancies her. But when Robin asks his foster brother, the returning sailor Richard Dauntless (David Webb), to help the pair get together, Dauntless instead finds himself falling for Rose.

So far, so conventional love triangle. Evans and Kellett are sweet as the tentative would-be lovers, while Webb’s Dauntless never feels as if he’s quite fitting into the air of earnest tomfoolery that director John Savournin is aiming for.

But this storyline is sidelined as soon as it is revealed that Robin is, in fact, Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, heir to a baronetcy, who had run away in the hope of avoiding the curse a witch once placed on the family. When Robin/Ruthven re-assumes his title in Act II, he is visited by the ghosts of his ancestors to check that he is fulfilling the terms of the curse – that he must commit at least one crime a day, or face an agonising death.

And it is this segment where the most fun is to be found, from the ancestors’ costume designs to some of the otherwise thin score’s better numbers. Stephen Gadd brings a looming presence to the ghost of Sir Roderic, while Kellett slips into the velvet smoking jacket and slicked-down hair look of Sir Ruthven that one quite forgets he was a shy yokel earlier.

Heather Shipp provides a courtly depth to her role as Rose’s spinster aunt, astutely offsetting both the wild-eyed performance of Heather Lowe as Mad Margaret and the droll performance of Richard Suart’s Old Adam Goodheart.

The City of London Sinfonia, conducted by David Eaton, gamely provide a version of Sullivan’s score (reduced by Eaton), although at times the reduction feels a little washed out. That’s made up for by the performances, which find much to amuse from a story which reminds us at every turn that there is a reason it’s considered to be one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s lesser works.

But while it never achieves the heights possible with some of those bigger, more well-known and more beloved G&S pieces, this production of Ruddigore does at least demonstrate that there is still fun to be had within their entire catalogue.

Continues until 12 August 2023