The amplification was dodgy, the Elsie Maynard had lost her voice, and the City of London Sinfonia, just 20 strong, sometimes sounded very thin under David Eaton’s buttoned-up direction for Arthur Sullivan’s most ambitious operetta score. Yet I can’t remember a production of The Yeomen of the Guard that so effectively judged the balance between farce and romance, happiness and heartbreak, grand spectacle and music-hall song and dance.
And, with Matthew Kellett as a Jack Point who has Cockney laddishness and a tragic brittleness, the production also gets the work’s sometimes problematic ending totally right — dispelling the ambiguity of Gilbert’s much-discussed final stage direction with a boldness that clearly came as a shock to many in the audience. The days when every educated person in the English-speaking world knew the plot of every Gilbert and Sullivan operetta are long gone.
Which is why persuasive stagings such as this — traditional in setting but deftly inventive and fluidly choreographed — are vital to keeping alive these nearly 150-year-old works. A joint effort by Opera Holland Park and Charles Court Opera, the show is directed by John Savournin, who also plays the Tower of London’s morose “assistant torturer” Wilfred Shadbolt with wonderfully lugubrious humour.
His pitch-perfect comic timing rubs off on those around him too. There are particularly memorable performances from Amy J Payne as a formidable Dame Carruthers, Darren Jeffery as Sergeant Meryll, the target of her bosomly affections, and especially Samantha Price as Phoebe, rich in voice, impeccable in diction and with an emotional vulnerability that is every bit as touching as Jack Point’s.
Though his big numbers could do with a little more vocal honey, William Morgan isn’t afraid to play the hero-worshipped Colonel Fairfax as a real bounder. And on first night we had both a miming Elsie — the voiceless Llio Evans, literally going through the motions — and a singing and speaking one: the excellent Ellie Laugharne, pulled in at the last minute to save the show, with an excellent job from the orchestra pit.
★★★★☆
170min. To August 10, operahollandpark.com
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