Liberally laced with witty words, satirical jibes, painfully pathetic puns, perilous patters of tortuous tongue-twisters, rousing melodies and all manner of comical, convoluted shenanigans and silliness, Gilbert and Sullivan’s light operas are not everyone’s cup of musical Earl Grey. Yet cult followings abound worldwide, and affectionate tributes are forever popping up – in The Simpsons, Frasier, Family Guy and Despicable Me for a small start, and often, as tonight, G&S works can draw people to their first opera experience, albeit a light one.
Between 1871 and 1896, wordsmith Gilbert and composer Sullivan collaborated on 14 comic operas, Ruddigore being the ninth in 1885. Theatre manager Richard D’Oyly Carte (his own name sounding like a Gilbert invention) was determined to make comic opera as popular in England as in France. It was his Savoy Theatre of 1881 that gave the Savoy operas their name.
Ruddigore (or The Witch’s Curse) is a bold, puerile pun on Ruddy Gore, words most shocking to sensitive Victorian ears. Conceived at a time when dark Victorian Gothic melodrama was all the rage in novels and onstage, it’s a melodramatic spoof on the melodrama genre, set around the Cornish village of Rederring (another groaning pun from the relentless Gilbert!) It tells the tale of the baronets Murgatroyd, whose family was cursed way back in time by a burning witch and ever since, the eldest Murgatroyd of each generation must commit a daily crime or suffer excruciating death. To escape the curse, though, what if an elder brother disappeared, pretended to be dead and assumed a new name – Robin Oakapple, perhaps? Ah, but what if, thanks to a treacherous foster brother, the dastardly truth comes out just as he stands at the altar, about to marry a sweet young girl?

In traditional melodrama evil villains are nothing but pure evil, heroes and heroines nothing but extremely good, but in Ruddigore, Gilbert turns everything topsy-turvy paradoxical so that stereotypical characters turn out to be not at all what they first seem. Cue silliness, muddle, mayhem and ridiculous plot, all set to music with many, many words both spoken and sung.
A revival by James Hurley of Opera North’s successful 2010 production, this cheerful, light-hearted comedy brings mild melodrama that’s never over-the-top wild or dark and elicits light-hearted smiles and LOL moments – as when a newly inserted verse sings of lettuce, Liz Truss, new spectacles and Keir Starmer. Otherwise, we’re nicely placed in the elegant 1920s, silent movie images and text neatly telling the back story as Sullivan’s overture plays its typical blend of weighty proclamation, jolly capering, lilting melody and lacing of sinister foreboding. Enter now a galloping, giggling gaggle of ebullient buxom professional bridesmaids, all cream floaty frocks, floweriness and fun, a pesky, comic chorus, ever ready, at the drop of a fascinator, to sing joyfully and cavort in showers of confetti. To drum up business, they urge Rose Maybud (or even her old aunt Hannah) to get married. As the plot twists, turns, pirouettes and cartwheels, prim, proper, etiquette-bound Rose gets caught up in the convoluted secrets and lies of the accursed Murgatroyds and of Ruthven Murgatroyd’s treacherous foster brother, sailor Dick Dauntless. Full of chirpy liveliness, clarity and ringing timbre, Xavier Hetherington engages well as the fine-singing Jolly Jack Tar, so much addicted to dancing hornpipes.
Though plot and characters may be unrealistic and convoluted, Richard Hudson’s set keeps things simple in the long first act: bed, chair and wallpaper for Rose’s bedroom; flower garden backdrop of subdued hues for outside; benches for the panelled church; seascape backdrop for the coast with lifebelt, gull, Punch and Judy booth, and deckchairs for men in stripy swimsuits with hankies on their heads. For the grand spectacle of the shorter second act, though, an impressively more substantial set creates dark heavy, horror movie vibes as lightning flashes through long windows across lumbering desk and chairs to illuminate deep rows of ancestral portraits on the dark panels of Ruddigore Castle. Reminiscent of spooky Hogwarts magic (but actually thanks to the work of illusionist Paul Kieve), those in the portraits come to life and spring, singing, into the room, wearing an array of impressive ancestral outfits. Gabrielle Dalton’s elegance of 1920’s costumes give way now to Murgatroyd ghosts in wigs, tricornes, armour, cassocks and military regalia as we embrace fights, frights, skeletons, abduction, dastardly torture, further revelations, loud gun shots and multiple happy-ever-after weddings.

Full of fine, jolly songs and wordiness, nicely delivered, the piece may not showcase the best of operatic singing, but its bigly strong in the fun of fiddly-dee-dee and in consistent, buoyant humour and pleasing teamwork. John Savournin’s Sir Despard Murgatroyd, initially emerging tall, dark, moustachioed and mock scary in top hat and black cape, puts on lighter attire once relieved of the curse, ready to hoof fine Ministry of Silly Dance routines in a duetting comedy duo with Helen Evora, whose Mad Margaret is well sung and portrayed, her madness not overblown – and anyway, her eccentric emotions are reined in, of course, by any mention of Basingstoke.
Soprano Amy Freston is appropriately all upright poise and primness as etiquette-rules-obsessed heroine Rose Maybud until she quickly proves far from prim, proper or heroic, blowing on the breeze as fickle as a Charleston-dancing feather as she engages herself to one chap after another after another. One such is Ruthven Murgatroyd, masquerading as Robin Oakapple, played shy, boastful and blandly nice by Dominic Sedgwick, who earns fine laughs with his comically inept cape-twirling as a would-be evil-doer. Claire Pascoe’s Dame Hannah is beautifully warm and sympathetic, especially in her touching duet when reuniting with Steven Page’s Sir Roderic – notwithstanding he’s been dead ten years and is now a ghost in WWI uniform.
Enjoyable silliness and fun run through the music and drama right through to the bonkers denouement and, of course… if you can’t hear all the patter, well it really doesn’t matter, matter, matter (though it’s a special treat if you can). Anyway, all the words are, thankfully, written up at the side.
Eileen Caiger Gray