Opera North at Lowry: Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Nights Dream and Ruddigore by Gilbert & Sullivan - Review

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Sat 12 Oct 2024 - Thu 21 Nov 2024

Opera North at Lowry: Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Ruddigore by Gilbert & Sullivan - Review

A chorus of children, all dressed in white, with blonde wigs, opened Opera North’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

There was something unsettling about the way they were not afraid of the mad spirit -
Puck/Robin Goodfellow, who was dressed in red shorts, pointy ears and with very hairy legs. (Daniel Abelson, in a devilishly nimble performance).

Puck is the agent of Oberon (James Laing) - the King of the Fairies. Composer, Benjamin Britten’s use of a countertenor for the role, added to the haunting quality of the early scenes. The ethereal aspect of Shakespeare’s play is beautifully complemented by the sound world which Britten conjured up.



I found the scenes involving The Rude Mechanicals and their play-within-a-play for the Athenian royal wedding, less compelling. This was not because the music or performances were any worse but because, for me, Shakespeare’s humour is stretched very thin and seems to depend on in-jokes and even a degree of snobbery in the depiction of these craftsmen and their dramatic aspirations. There were clusters of laughter in the audience rather than universal hilarity.

Bottom, one of the Rude Mechanicals, does get to be wrapped in some of the score’s lushest moments when the glamorous Tytania (Daisy Brown) wakes up and asks What angel wakes me from my flowery bed? after Oberon and Puck’s magic flower bewitches her. Bottom gets to be surrounded by high notes of romance before sliding back down to the base sounds of the mortal world.



Having not seen Britten’s opera before, I wondered what setting Shakespeare’s sublime text to music could actually add. The play has its own rhythm and musicality in its poetry and dramatic momentum and doesn’t need ‘rescuing’ with the addition of arias.

But it did inspire a marvellous mercurial score which constantly twists and turns from one part of the orchestra to another and keeps us, the audience, from slipping into slumber.

Britten and Peter Pears (who collaborated on the libretto) kept the opera from being an all-night affair by cutting - but not altering - much of Shakespeare’s text. Britten also used overlapping voices to great effect, for the delivery of some of the lines.

The set design, by Johan Engels - translucent Perspex, with giant bubbles - had an icy beauty to it, sometimes shifting to lush green. If this was a forest, it was one in the far north.

The costumes of Tytania and Oberon, designed by Ashley Martin-Davis, were particularly eye-catching - their glitter constantly caught the lights, as if they were both dressed in wearable mirror balls.

Ruddigore also opened with a chorus dressed in white. But this time it was in the form of excitable, professional bridesmaids, who were lamenting that there had been no wedding for six long months, in their Cornish village.



The first half of the evening built towards the ceremony they yearned for, via some conflicting proposals, although the wedding went about as smoothly as one in a soap opera. When there is a criminal family curse and brotherly betrayal to contend with, this is hardly surprising.

One thing Gilbert & Sullivan and Shakespeare clearly agreed on is that The course of true love never did run smooth, especially when the lovers are not awake or alive or are under the spell of mind-altering flowers.

The curtain went up after the interval to reveal a castle where the Addams Family would feel at home. The action unfolded with scenes echoing Mozart’s statue of the Commendatore coming to life in Don Giovanni. It also made me wonder if the writers of the BBC sitcom Ghosts were influenced by Gilbert & Sullivan.



The performers seemed to be having great fun in this joyous send-up of Victorian Gothic melodrama. I particularly enjoyed Xavier Hetherington’s turn as Dick Dauntless - His hornpipe is the talk of the fleet. He never misses the chance to bring up a reference to the sailor’s life, even though he is back on dry land.



The characters stay just on the right side of caricature, meaning that there is room in the second half for some more melancholy tones, such as the duet There Grew a Little Flower.

Gilbert’s lines combine clarity with wit. I liked the chiming of Old Adam with Valet de chambre. I suspect though that, unless Gilbert had amazing foresight, references to Liz Truss and Sir Keir Starmer were recent inserts by Opera North. Ruddigore was first staged by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theatre in London on 22 January 1887. when Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister and Queen Victoria was on the throne.

I had always put off going to see anything by Gilbert & Sullivan as the idea of ‘light opera’ sounded like the prospect of low-alcohol champagne - a bit pointless. There were a few scenes that dragged - where Gilbert & Sullivan seemed to be enjoying the sound of their own wit a little bit too much. But overall, I was happy to be proved wrong when it comes to ‘light opera’, at least when it was in the creative hands of G&S.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream will also be performed at Theatre Royal, Nottingham on Wednesday 20 November. For more information and to book click here

This production of Ruddigore has visited Leeds Grand Theatre, Newcastle Theatre, as well as Lowry, Salford Quays. The tour ends at Theatre Royal, Nottingham on Thursday 21 November. For more information and to book click here.

Running times for A Midsummer Night’s Dream: 47 mins/interval/ 50 mins / interval / 54 mins. Approx.

Running time for Ruddigore: 81 mins /interval / 56 mins. Approx.




Mozart’s The Magic Flute, the other current production by Opera North, ends its run at Hull New Theatre on Saturday 29th March 2025.

Quays Theatre, The Lowry, Pier 8, Salford Quays M50 3AZ
0843 208 6010
0161 876 2000



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