September 10, 2025 · 12:02 am
EMPYREAN ENTERTAINMENT; CLUTCH IT TO YOUR FAINTING BOSOM NOW!
It ought to be on prescription, so therapeutic of life’s frustrations is that this Charles Court Opera revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s silliest present. John Savournin’s manufacturing is lyrically and melodically rendered by 9 fabulous classical voices, every of them hooked up – in actually uncommon windfall – to a matchless bodily wit. A dogged viewers for the Wiltons’ first evening braved strikebound London (to not dangerous with 453 and 205 buses and Shadwell on the overground) and have been richly rewarded.
Who wouldn’t rejoice in Matthew Kellett’s Bunthorne, leaping round like an emotionally incontinent meerkat? Or Catrine Kirman’s fed-up Lady Jane calculating her declining appears whereas nicking a packet of crisps and stamping on a vogue journal, Lady Angela impersonating “a poisoned hawk”, or the painfully earnest transformation of three hapless “fleshly” grenadiers into lipsticked and befrilled aesthetes? Every scene is a contemporary pleasure, the music in fact fairly pretty and the patter irresistible (“by no endeavour can a magnet ever attract a silver churn”: we’ve all been that magnet as soon as).
But Patience’s different USP is its reckless, relentless antiromantic satire on each yearningly overcomplicated feelings-junkie , and each trendy idolatry of preening poseurs and loghorreic pretenders. G&S have been guying the rival aestheticisms of unique Wilde and Swinburne and folksy William Morris, with Bunthorne’s agonized pallid “Hollow hollow hollow” exoticism in pink lipstick, and Matthew Siveter’s cod-folksong “Hey willow waley O” . But as every man contemplates the burden of his personal irresistible magnificence and genius, it suits properly into to the age of Russell Brand, Justin Bieber, Will Self, David Tennant… title your individual.
And Savournin pops in some good up-to-date Gilbertisms for the aesthetic Bunthorne (Sartre/Sinatra, WSG would admire that ) and modernizes the decided simplicity of Grosvenor renouncing his poetic crown with traces about Adidas and SportsDirect.
It’s all a pleasure, simply immaculately performed each artistically and comedically, correctly excessive powered on its tiny scale. David Eaton makes the lone piano as expressive as any orchestra; correctly lovely is Catriona Hewitson’s marvellous, birdlike tune and baffled feelings as buxom put-upon Patience. The Grenadiers are magnificently manly, the lovelorn girls pinnacles of stylish ridiculousness. No joke is misplaced , none milked too lengthy, no gesture wasted. Simon Bejer’s jolly saloon-bar set frames it well. It’s a magnificence. Six extra performances, one a matinee. Enjoy.
Wiltons.org.uk to 13 sept
score 5
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