Review: Opera North in Ruddigore, Grand Theatre, Leeds (From York Press)

Review: Opera North in Ruddigore, Grand Theatre, Leeds

9:21am Tuesday 2nd February 2010

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THOUGH it has never enjoyed the popularity of the more hackneyed of the Savoy operas, Ruddigore has always been treasured by connoisseurs.

Since nearly a quarter-century has elapsed since last we saw G&S from this company, it was the perfect choice.

Saturday’s full house testified to the widespread enthusiasm it engenders.

Opera North has not let its opportunity slip. On the contrary, if this Jo Davies production doesn’t rehabilitate Ruddigore’s reputation, nothing will. No one need examine the libretto too closely. Gilbert parodies anything and everything to do with Victorian melodrama – and Sullivan responds with surprising seriousness.

Here you will find all their usual trademarks: a delightful madrigal in When The Buds Are Blossoming, two patter-songs, including Matter, Matter, Matter which out-patters them all, and hidden identities and skulduggery aplenty.

But when it comes to ancestors descending from their portraits and creating merry havoc in Ghosts’ High Noon, Sullivan takes his nearest step to grand opera. In this production it is both tragicomic and scary.

Updating the action to the era of silent movies is a clever move. For Richard Hudson’s picture gallery in Ruddigore Castle, ancestral home of the cursed Murgatroyds, is straight out of the Addams family or Frankenstein, and Richard Angas as Old Adam plays the macabre family retainer to the hilt.

All this invites something over the top. Opera North thinks otherwise. So the build-up is relatively slow: the village full of bridesmaids is harmless and charming, and Amy Freston’s virginal Rose Maybud is an engaging ingénue rather than truly bubbly. When her planned marriage ceremony just before the interval falls through, we are introduced to any number of unlikely pairings, all of them liberally dowsed in petals – and figments of the director’s imagination.

Have no fear: the second act is on an entirely different plane, with Steven Page’s superb Sir Roderic sonorous in speech and song as a First World War general (and reduced to a powder-puff by his childhood sweetheart).

There are several finely drawn portraits, none better than Anne-Marie Owens’ Dame Hannah. Heather Shipp is truly ingenious as Mad Margaret, especially riveting in act two, and cleverly partnered by Richard Burkhard’s slick Sir Despard, reminiscent of Count Dracula.

Grant Doyle, pictured seated, is pleasingly bashful as Robin, but never quite convinces as the dastardly Sir Ruthven. Darker tone might help. Similarly, Hal Cazalet’s Dauntless could also be more piratical. But with John Wilson’s orchestra on sparkling form and the chorus highly disciplined despite the hi-jinks, this is an evening to restore Ruddigore to the front rank of English operetta.

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