TRIAL BY JURY/ HMS PINAFORE
The National
Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company
At
Malvern Theatre ***
The company’s title sounds grand and imposing, the reality
is somewhat different, with so many variable standards in performance.
What is undeniably laudable is the unashamedly traditional
set-designs of these productions, a forbidding courtroom for Trial, a properly
nautical foredeck for Pinafore. These cameos by Gilbert and Sullivan are firmly
set both in the period of their creation and the period of their action, and any directorial gimmickry can only show up
frailties in their structure. So full marks to the company for this.
Not so laudable is the varying standard of delivery, and
therein lies the problem for any audience outside the G&S diehards. We had
here a portrayal of a main character straight out of the Savoyard mould so
appreciated by devotees, Simon Butteriss’ Sir Joseph Porter in Pinafore: camp
both in voice and body-language, mannered in vocal delivery, so lapped up by
perhaps an ageing cohort of cognoscenti, but also so revealing that this style
is going nowhere down a cul-de-sac.
We also have Gilbert’s nasty, Freudian depiction of older
women, Sullivan collaborating with blustery musical settings of their arias.
Gaynor Keeble here transcended this straitjacket, delivering a commanding vocal
performance and conveying an imperious stage-presence as Pinafore’s Buttercup.
But transcending all these caveats was Bradley Travis as Pinafore’s
Captain Corcoran (he also directed the show). his voice immediately attractive,
direct on its own terms with no mannerisms, his persona constantly charismatic.
Among other roles in Pinafore were Sam Marston’s appealing and promising Ralph
Rackstraw, and Bruce Graham’s sympathy-inducing Dick Deadeye (surely this
character is a cousin to the anything but sympathetic Claggart in Britten’s
Billy Budd!).
Graham was also director of the curtain-opening Trial by
Jury, a straightforward production enlivened mainly by the choreography of Rae
Piper and Paul Chantry, whose direction of the chorus in both operas was
exemplary.
Indeed, the Chorus of jurymen and public was the highlight
in Trial’s rather wan presentation. Of the soloists, Claire Ward was an impressive
Plaintiff, standing out from colleagues among whom the Learned Judge ducked his
high notes and the Defendant was reedy, sounding anything but louchely
seductive.
The National Festival Orchestra played with enthusiastic
spirit; James Hendry’s conducting was demonstratively energetic, big in
gesture, but failed to relax enough to bring out the beauties of Sullivan’s
scores, not least in Trial by Jury.
Christopher Morley
ends