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Nonsense with high polish
THE-GRAND DUKE
G & S SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH
KING'S THEATRE, EDINBURGH
A LIBRETTO based on
the indiscriminate consumption of a sausage roll, with arias about little
balls, and a series of dreadfully rum-ti-turn choruses doesn't sound like fun -
even for the most unswerving Gilbert and Sullivan aficionado.
But at the King's Theatre this week, The Grand Duke presented by the Gilbert and
Sullivan Society of Edinburgh succeeds remarkably.
Both entertaining and visually appealing, the production manages to override
the major embarrassments of Gilbert's lumpy plot, and to sustain one's interest
despite vocal writing for the most part unworthy of Sullivan.
Musically, the real interest lies in the orchestration, where the late Act I
arias have almost Schubertian woodwind writing. Sullivan's string writing always
has its fiendish moments, usually cruelly exposed. In The Grand Duke, the last G
& S collaboration, achieved amid squabbles and bitterness, some of the
contention appears to have spilled over into the score, the violins being doomed
to struggle with hair-raising scales, and dotted rhythms hard to articulate.
Edinburgh G & S Society may not currently have star voices in its cast, but it
does have some startlingly good character actors, whose performances reinforce
the riotous incredibility of the story, and carry it shoulder high past the
pitfalls. Ian Lawson, as the solicitor, bumbles on to the stage in Act I, and
seems to animate all those around him.
From then on, the opera becomes a flurry of gentle silliness, with a
wonderfully contrasted group of posturing ladies, pouting menfolk, and a
woebegone Duke - a study in miserable and miserly gentility from Maxwell Smart
- all beautifully set, with movement and glowing colour.
Mary Miller
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