Peter Mulloy's flatlining production is based on (exhumed from?) WS Gilbert's original 1885 prompt book.
An ungallant observer might wonder if it also employs some of the original cast. It has a creaky chorus and antiquated juveniles; and, if the three little maids do indeed arrive straight from school, they must have been picking up their kids. It's all duff timing, fake simpers and incessant fanwork. At least it looks scrumptious, with loving sets and costumes from Mike Leigh's film Topsy-Turvy. Leigh understood how Gilbert's lines and Sullivan's plaintive melodies titter around the edge of melancholy and exasperation, but Mulloy never finds the dark notes. This Carl Rosa Opera season drafts in some telly names (here, Alistair McGowan's fey Mikado), but apart from Sophie-Louise Dann's roguish Pitti-Sing, the only person much bothered with the acting is Nichola McAuliffe's battleaxe. Red-eyed, distracted and cloyingly maternal, she sighs for the one who gets away: "It takes years to train a man to love me."
Gielgud, W1