Dismiss their works at your peril. Strip the barnacles of stale tradition off the Victorian duos’s light operettas and their seditious glory still shines
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, living above my parent’s sweetshop in Brighton, a terrible thing happened. I developed an obsession, a dark craving that threatened to derail my happy family home. My school work suffered, I found myself unable to sleep, and my poor parents feared for my sanity. Social services were even mentioned. The diagnosis, at least, was simple. I’d become addicted to Gilbert and Sullivan.
The gateway drug, if such there be, was an encounter with their operetta The Yeomen of The Guard; for it was here on Tower Green, among the Beefeaters, that my epiphany occurred. It may have been merely a homespun production at my boys’ secondary school, yet despite the wobbling scenery, the female roles played by first-formers with improbable bosoms and an orchestra resembling a sackful of traumatised cats, I was captivated by this perfect synthesis of drama, comedy and unforgettable melodies. There was even a promised live execution. What more could a boy want?
