Had the air of a Blue Peter Christmas special: Grange Festival’s The Yeomen of the Guard reviewed

The Yeomen of the Guard has been called the ‘English Meistersinger’ but the more you think about that, the dafter it gets.

It’s not just the very obvious difference in scale and means between Wagner’s five-hour national epic and Gilbert and Sullivan’s sprightly opéra comique. Wagner’s whole drama builds to a collective affirmation of German art. The Yeomen begins by setting up a fantasy of an English golden age – the Tower of London in the 16th century – then systematically cuts it to ribbons.

Act One’s gallant hero becomes Act Two’s callous seducer, whose march towards his own happy ending leaves a trail of collateral damage: a spiral of lies, two all-but-forced marriages and the unheeded emotional destruction of at least one central character. European directors work overtime (and how!) to puncture the uplift at the end of Die Meistersinger. If the director of The Yeomen merely follows Gilbert’s instructions to the letter, audiences gasp out loud with dismay.

In short, I had high hopes for Christopher Luscombe’s new production at the Grange Festival; unreasonably high, perhaps. The cast and company are excellent: Ellie Laugharne as Elsie, Graeme Broadbent as Sergeant Meryll and John Savournin as Sir Richard Cholmondeley (in G&S terms, not so much luxury casting as platinum-plated), all under the baton of John Andrews, a conductor who absolutely understands Sullivan’s style – which is to say, he conducts it with the transparent, lyrical verve of early Mendelssohn.

A less familiar name is Nick Haverson as the jester Jack Point, whose vocal dexterity (he’s what you might call a character baritone, but he gets around Gilbert’s tongue-twisting patter as nimbly as Fred Astaire) was matched by an astonishing physical agility – pratfalling, capering and cringing with a supple, controlled energy that was like watching the music itself take physical form.