HMS Pinafore, ENO at the Coliseum

"When I was at prep school in the 1960s, a series of old military buffers came to give a lecture to my motley group of school friends about how we were predestined to run the British Empire; this was always an unlikely prospect since our colonial cousins were jumping ship at an alarming speed. Part of this imperial training process involved putting us young boys in dresses and bonnets and full stage slap to perform Gilbert and Sullivan operettas."

"H.M.S. Pinafore is a twoact comic opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan first produced at the Opera Comique in London in 1878. It was the fourth operatic collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan and became the duo's first international hit, combining a sharp satire of class and politics with a tightly constructed romantic plot set aboard a Royal Navy warship anchored in Portsmouth harbour."

"H.M.S. Pinafore has lost none of its satirical edge and still has plenty of contemporary resonance, lampooning the class system and its concomitant promotion of people with few if any skills to elite positions of power. There is also comic mileage to be found in the stupidity of English exceptionalism which is built into the bones of the story. At the heart of the narrative is a love story."

Prep-school lectures in the 1960s presented lads as predestined to run the British Empire while imperial training forced boys to perform Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, fostering attachment to their comic wordplay and melodies. A revival of Cal McCrystal's 2021 production of H.M.S. Pinafore opened at the Coliseum. H.M.S. Pinafore, first produced in 1878, was the fourth collaboration between Gilbert and Sullivan and their first international hit. The opera combines sharp satire of class and politics with a tightly constructed romantic plot aboard a Royal Navy warship. The piece still resonates, lampooning elite promotion of the unqualified and English exceptionalism, while centring on a love story.

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