REVIEW: Ruddigore, Opera North, Newcastle Theatre Royal
Hours after leaving the theatre, and in fact all night, jaunty rhythms have been playing in my head, punctuated by the shrieks of massed bridesmaids.
Call it a galloping case of Gilbert & Sullivanitis – not so much a curse, like Ruddigore (or Ruddygore as it was called when the 10th G&S comic opera premiered in 1887), but more of a natural after-effect.
Opera North have revived Jo Davies’s 2010 production of Ruddigore which delighted audiences at the Theatre Royal back then and drew another big crowd for this single performance.
The setting is updated to the 1920s, enabling it to be framed within the device of a silent movie with the all-important back story projected onto the curtain during the overture.
It tells of poor Hannah who years ago discovered that her betrothed was none other than Sir Roderic Murgatroyd, latest in a line of local baronets to fall under a witch’s curse known as ruddigore.
Inheritors of the title must now commit a crime a day or die, condemned therefore to be bad baronets.
The curtain rising, we are transported to a bedroom in the Cornish village of Rederring where pretty Rose Maybud awakes to a great gaggle of bridesmaids.
They’re the local professionals, perennially poised to perform their nuptial duties but underemployed in Rederring where hopes are pinned on Rose - or indeed anyone.
Rose lives by her book of etiquette, checking potential suitors for flaws. But she’s overly picky and the seemingly eligible Robin Oakapple is diffident to the point of paralysis.
When Robin’s seafaring foster-brother Dick Dauntless turns up, Robin gratefully lets him woo Rose on his behalf. And it all goes wrong from there.
It’s a wonderfully daft and topsy-turvy tale, simmering at first but coming to the boil when Robin’s cover is blown.
He is Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd who has been in hiding, allowing younger brother Despard to misbehave on his behalf. The garb of bad baronet – black suit, top hat, devilish moustache – duly passes to him.
And when his crimes are subsequently derided as pretty petty, the indignant ancestors, led by Sir Roderic, emerge from their portraits on the wall to stiffen his resolve. A brilliant spectacle, that.
Despard, meanwhile, has opted for a life of domesticity – not bliss exactly – with Mad Margaret, the girl he once disappointed and whose agitations can be pacified only by the word “Basingstoke”.
A big cast, a crowded stage and some winning performances – among them Amy Freston as Rose, Dominic Sedgwick as Robin, Xavier Hetherington as Dick, John Savournin as Despard, Helen Évora as Margaret and Hartlepool-born Claire Pascoe as Hannah – made this a fun and fulsome night in the theatre.
And such is the daftness of WS Gilbert’s lines (“Oh, happy the blossom/ That blooms on the lea,/ Likewise the opossum/ That sits on a tree…”) and Sir Arthur Sullivan’s complementary rat-tat-tat score, that you won’t quickly forget it.
Conductor Jack Ridley, making his Opera North debut, was hauled on stage at the end to share the applause. Well deserved, too. He'll have needed a lie down after that.
Opera North are at Newcastle Theatre Royal until Saturday (November 9) with The Magic Flute. Tickets here.