Princess Ida
By Robert Beale

Mon, 17 August, 2009 IT’S the 16th year of the International Gilbert & Sullivan festival at Buxton, and the new production of Princess Ida, directed by Jeff Clarke, was a welcome breath of fresh air. It showed that in this world of entertainment, where tradition can seem all-important, innovation has its modest place. Mr Clarke is the brilliant creator and director of Opera della Luna, with its zany reworkings of pieces such as The Pirates of Penzance (aka The Parson’s Pirates), Ruddigore and HMS Pinafore. It has been at the festival in its own right, too, with the aforesaid Parson’s Pirates and a new version of The Sorcerer. But to direct a production by the festival’s own professional Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company is a favour Mr Clarke accepted this year for the first time and clearly took with due seriousness. There was a time when woe betide the director who strayed from the hallowed path, and he did not set out to cause undue dismay, even in 2009. But he had some delicious new ideas which, as far as I’m concerned, added enormously to the fun of a piece. It’s an ambitious work in many ways, with blank verse dialogue and a three-act structure: conductor David Russell Hulme brought expertise to the music’s realisation, and the men’s chorus was particularly strong. Romantic hogwash The story itself is pure Romantic hogwash, with rival kings, a hero prince and a princess who forsakes men in favour of study and female superiority. Gareth Jones (Hildebrand), Philip Cox (a classic portrayal of the obnoxious Gama), Oliver White (Hilarion) and Chloe Wright (Ida) played all these roles pretty straight and sang finely. The fun came with the support: James Cleverton and Tobias Merz (Florian and Cyril) brought a touch of exaggeration in character (more than a touch in the latter’s case) that lifted their roles as Hilarion’s friends to comic cameos, and Ian Belsey, Terence den Dulk and Alastair McCall were magnificent as Gama’s gormless, heavyweight sons. Among Ida’s maidens, Victoria Byron twinkled as Melissa and Jill Pert was magnificent as the dried-up Lady Blanche, with Lisa Anne Robinson (Lady Psyche) completing the trio. Amid all this, the tableau opening to each act drew deserved applause, and the gentle send-up of the encore tradition (indulged in the hilarious cross-dressing scene when the lads enter the maidens’ realm) worked to great effect as Ida finally yielded, not to superior force – but to the threat of yet another repetition of one of those maddening songs.