H.M.S Pinafore

When did we fall out out of love with Gilbert & Sullivan? There is, after all, so much to love, the jaunt comedy songs, the pretty ballads and the rousing choruses, the attacks on social mores and political incorrectness.
It has taken Sasha Regan’s extraordinary new all male productions to sweep away the dust and strip away the rancid aspic in which these works have been held for so many years that they have all but been forgotten. Three cheers then for Sasha and her excellent company for this.
Of course it would be pretty easy to produce a camp, all male version of a G&S that was irreverent and failed to acknowledge the brilliance of the original, but that would be a cheap shot and never enough. G&S deserve better and Regan delivers just that.
Her Pinafore is a poignant reworking of the original that seeks contemporary themes and finds them, that re-energises the music with a fine piano accompaniment and excellent vocal skills from a team of superb singers in the well drilled chorus and soloists who wring every last nuance from both music and lyric. Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is camp parody or pantomime, this is a quality production of the highest musicality.
Her Iolanthe was magical, her Pirates of Penzance delicious and now her Pinafore continues to mine this rich seam of English art that was almost consigned to the history books. Lovers of G&S, and we do exist, should get down to the Theatre Royal Brighton fast and see that this is what we have all been waiting for, a new age for the Victorian wits who set the bar so high for comedy operetta. I can hardly wait for her Mikado!
21 June
Theatre Royal Brighton
Andrew Kay
5 stars