ENO Pirates sail on in style

Never understood those detractors who claim Mike Leigh didn't do enough with Gilbert and Sullivan's first out-and-out masterpiece, The Pirates of Penzance, which I loved on its first appearance at ENO two years ago. Indeed, he taught me that it might, after all, be the best, despite some bigger ambitions in parts of Iolanthe, The Yeomen of the Guard and Princess Ida. Less is more in G&S: get the singer-actors to deliver its topsy-turveyness straight, and the fantastical wit will only seem the stronger.

True, there's some campery, but of the innocent sort: the Pirate King and above all the Major General (Andrew Shore, peerless both times round, pictured with Ashley Riches' Pirate King and chorus above in the first of many production images by Tom Bowles) are big kids who love to romp with, respectively, fellow noblemen-gone-wrong and daughters. The mesh of adaptable set and handsome period costumes seems just as clever second time round (everyone loves the Policemen peeking out around the circle-frame).

I went again partly to introduce the youngest godchild by some distance, seven-year-old Mirabel - the rest are now in their early twenties - to the delights of G&S. She seemed gripped throughout, but what she liked I don't know, because she's gone into a shy zone, head buried in books at tea afterwards (which is delightful in itself, especially as they're not of the electronic variety). But her parents and I adored it - indeed, mum Edsy, who's now a fan of Charles Court Opera's bracing reimaginings, constantly reels at the subversiveness of it all. Like so many folk, she'd thought the Savoy Operas were the provenance of polite home-counties am-dram, whereas when done at the highest level they provide the greatest sheer pleasure of which music theatre is capable.

The many newcomers to the cast were all impressive. I wondered if any Mabel could be as delicious and vocally impressive as Claudia Boyle first time round; welcome Soraya Mafi from Lancashire, a coloratura of high style and engaging stage presence (pictured above).

Ashley Riches brings opulent musical skills to bear on the Johnny Deppesque Pirate King, phrasing in long lines (what a classy singer he is). And I want one of them pirate skirts.

There's promise, too, from tenor David Webb as a Frederic more worthy of those girls' gushing about 'manly beauty' than the excellent Robert Murray. And John Tomlinson is nothing diminished as Chief Plod, doing subtle things with the famous song. Conductor Gareth Jones made a real impression with the ENO Orchestra in the Overture, and kept it all on the boil more skilfully than most audience members will have realised. The chorus actually gets its due for once this season; why do I forget until it arrives that 'Hail, Poetry' is such an a cappella stunner, the centrepiece of an Act 1 Finale that otherwise doesn't do much dramatically (think Katisha's entrance, the Fairy Queen's 'curse', to name but two)?

The one improvement on last time is Lucy Schaufer (pictured above with Riches and Webb), musical theatre pro who always knows the right buttons to press, as a Ruth with a very impressive chest-voice-taken-high and an unflinching delivery of west country vowels and consonants. As I've made her acquaintance, I suggested to Edsy that Mirabel might like to go to the Stage Door accompanied by the skull-and-crossbones-touting bear on loan from her school - truculent elephant Mr Panz, who sings G&S style songs already, had to stay at home - to meet her.

Mum was possibly more thrilled, childlike-fashion, at this proposal than daughter, but back we went, and Lucy was swiftly out, absolutely charming in sitting down and signing the programme before going off for a massage between shows (she's wearing the hat, by the way, to keep her hair flat between wig-sportings). We also got to meet Ms Mafi and young Webb, who of course were models of natural friendliness, as I told the family most British singers are in my experience.

Then it was off to Maison Bertaux for tea and cakes. A pretty good afternoon out, I'd say. If you want to revisit My Evening With Mike Leigh, in the pre-performance talk we shared back in 2015, you can find it on Soundcloud here.

Meeting Mike Leigh

I hoped, but hardly dared to believe, that one of my great heroes would show up for a pre-performance talk in which I was participating at English National Opera. Mike Leigh's film work has been carved into the consciousness of (most of) my generation, at least in the UK. It even seems from what my goddaughter Rosie May told me that a whole new fanbase is popping up among students for the evergreen Abigail's Party many years after Alison Steadman's Bev first tottered around serving up 1970s party snacks and asking a male guest flirtatiously 'Do you like Demis [Roussos]?': Rosie had heard of a production in which the cast drank in 'real time' so they really were pissed as the show wore on, and she'd seen it onstage elsewhere.

Since then, as well as having a good laugh, I've been touched at various levels by Nuts in May, High Hopes, Naked, Life is Sweet, Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake - and the surprise hit of Leigh's biopic on Gilbert and Sullivan at the time of staging The Mikado, Topsy-Turvy. The stage work less so. I thought Mr Turner was a total masterpiece - DVD review here - and I'd put it up there with Des hommes et des dieux (about the French monks in Algeria kidnapped and murdered by terrorists) and La grande bellezza, Paolo Sorrentino's ambiguous hymn to Rome as one of the three films I've seen over the past five years to have had the greatest impact.All three I imagine I could see again and again.

News that ENO had hooked Leigh to direct The Pirates of Penzance (production photos here by Tristram Kenton; talk snaps by Charlotte van Berckel from ENO's technical department) made me nervous. Would it work? It did, and I felt relieved to be able to praise it very genuinely on The Arts Desk, though maybe you have to be in sympathy with the razor-sharp G&S idiom and how that might most sympathetically be served to 'get' it. Like it or not - I loved it and laughed very loud very often - there was no doubt that time and effort had been put into every move, every grouping. Much surer-footed throughout, in short, than Terry Gilliam's Berlioz, though that had flashes of genius.

The work that had gone into a very polished show with a superlative cast (above, the wondrous Claudia Boyle as Mabel with Jonathan Lemalu as the Chief of Police and his deadpan men) became the more apparent following Mike's arrival the other Wednesday, five minutes before we were due to start, for the talk (by the way, the likely choice had been staff director Elaine Tyler-Hall, which would have meant a necessary woman in the group. But you can't sniff at the company that did materialise).

Christopher Cook, the absolute doyen of animateurs in my opinion and pictured on the right in the top shot, had mapped out a format familiar to these well-planned 45-minute events, which he always steers to perfection: he'd ask me questions for 10 or so minutes about the background and the music, then turn to Mike about the show, then the cover Major-General, Adrian Powter (top shot left), accompanied by vital repetiteur Chris Hopkins, would sing the patter song (Andrew Shore as Stanley Mark One with Joshua Bloom's equally impressive Pirate King pictured here),

and finally there'd be a general discussion and questions. But Mike took control, not at all in an unpleasant way, the minute he arrived, and decided it would be interactive from the start. It was impressive if slightly scary to see his stage management, but reassuring to see how he gave everyone credit (nice nod to the pianist, for example, and no sense of exclusive ego, though you've got to have one well adjusted to the world to do what he does).

So we batted the ball to and fro, I loved every minute, and you can hear the results on this podcast.

After the official business was over, we carried on chatting enthusiastically about G&S shows we'd seen going back some way, what we'd liked and what we hadn't (you'll hear on the podcast how it was a Finborough Theatre production of The Grand Duke which made that ML's first choice for ENO - but he couldn't get the collaborators he wanted to be equally enthusiastic). Needless to say, I'm going back to the ENO Pirates before the end of the run.

And while it's All About Me, and Great British Opera/operetta, here's the film Garsington finally released of the Death in Venice insight evening with Steuart Bedford and Andrew Mackenzie-Wicks. The Gondoliers it ain't, though I love Britten and G&S equally. You could say that the Savoy operas are tied to my childhood, Britten to my very slow coming out starting in my late teens.