British sea power

The story so far: in 1986 English National Opera hired Jonathan Miller to direct Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. The result was so fresh and funny that it’s been a mainstay of the ENO schedule for more than three decades, to the indignation of hardcore opera fans who can’t understand why audiences keep flocking to hummable melodies and humour instead of, say, Berg’s Lulu. Attempting to repeat the formula, ENO then made the rookie error of engaging Ken Russell who, being Ken Russell, promptly updated Princess Ida to the 21st century and set it in a futuristic sushi bar. Finally, in 2015 they entrusted The Pirates of Penzance to Mike Leigh, whose G&S biopic Topsy-Turvy seemed to guarantee a safe pair of hands. Good call. The first run of Leigh’s brightly coloured but basically traditional production was extended due to popular demand.

So there’s a fair amount riding on this first revival, overseen by director Sarah Tipple. Is Leigh’s Pirates going to be an infinitely repeatable bestseller on a Mikado scale? It certainly looked pretty full, and the matinee audience was the most youthful I’ve seen at a London house (some of the youngest had come dressed as pirates). And they laughed, too, which is never a bad sign. Leigh’s approach to G&S isn’t as radical as Miller’s, and the costumes wouldn’t have looked out of place when The Pirates was first staged in 1879. Alison Chitty’s sets, on the other hand, are as remote from the D’Oyly Carte tradition as it’s possible to imagine — huge, abstract, geometrical flats in eye-watering primary colours. They throw the emphasis on to the individual performances, and occasionally, drolly, close in to frame a scene like an enormous pair of inverted commas.