The course of true love never did run smooth, especially when you're on a boat lying at anchor in Portmouth harbour.

Have I Got Victorian England For You?:

HMS Pinafore is a satire on Victorian life. Like all satire, sometimes it does not age particularly well and you get the same feeling of confusion as you might get when watching an episode of Have I Got News For You from 1994.

But there are things that do seem familiar. Sir Joseph Porter, based on the real life W H Smith, is a satire of the old school tie and the jobs for the boys culture. He has never been to sea, and has yet been promoted to the rank of First Lord of the Admiralty.

Better than Lloyd Webber?

It was such acute observations of politics and social status that earned Gilbert and Sullivan their position as great satirists, something that is often forgotten now by audiences who cannot see past the glib affectations of light opera.

Some performances try to overcome these problems by throwing in new jokes. In this Timothy West directed performance, we have gags about mobile phones. But such freshness is generally lacking in this performance, and it is left to individual actors to bring the ageing operetta to life.

The Eyes Have it:

The best performance is to be found in Colin Baker's portrayal of Sir Joseph Porter (KCB). He gives the character a well earned pomposity and a surprising effeminacy. Although he is not the world's best singer, he more than makes up for this failing through his gestures, demeanor and comic timing ("You may learn from the expression of my eyes").

Other strong performances come from Patricia Leonard as Little Buttercup and Steven Page as Captain Corcoran. Unfortunately, Anne Bourne's Josephine is not as strong.

Though undoubtedly a tremendous singer, she seems less comfortable with acting in a comic opera. Consequently some of her scenes do seem a little stilted. The scene where she is torn between accepting Ralph's proclamation of love and rejecting it could be handled much better.

Five Tunes for the Price of One:

Perhaps the best musical moments are to be found where Gilbert and Sullivan are left to themselves. The score, as always with Gilbert and Sullivan, is an aural delight, strands of separate songs weave in and out of one another until the entire cast appears to be singing five different songs at the same time. This produces a fantastic montage of sound.

Damned if you do...

HMS Pinafore may seem a little dated with its quaint dislike of the "D" word (although Steven Page's is-he-or-isn't-he-going-to-use-the-F-word delivery of the word "Fie", goes someway towards remedying this anachronism).

However, it does remain a solid piece of G & S entertainment. And who cares that there's a bizarre deus ex machina ending with Lord Admirals marrying their cousins, ex-Captains marrying their foster mothers and two men being simultaneously the same age and twenty years apart?

Far stranger things happen in serious opera.

03/03/04 - First published on www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire on this link