Scottish Opera: ‘Utopia Limited’
The Festival Theatre - 05/11/21
In 2020 Scottish Opera hoped to produce ‘The Gondoliers’ and ‘Utopia Limited’. Both are now touring major theatres this year under “normal conditions.” (More of that anon). Meanwhile in the last year Scottish Opera has given a home to the Savoy Opera Borrowing Library which tonight’s conductor, Derek Clark, has described as like having access to an Aladdin’s Cave. Clark, who is Scottish Opera’s Director of Music, has been responsible for the arrangement of these “pop-up” potted G and S operas which have enlivened two lockdown summers with their witty outdoor performances.
Glasgow and Edinburgh each have one performance of ‘Utopia Limited’ during their runs of ‘The Gondoliers’. The same performers sing in both operas. ‘Utopia Limited’ is billed as a semi-staged performance, a description, I was pleased to find, which undersells what is on offer. The stage set is minimal - the checkerboard floor and Rousseau-esque backdrop of exotic vegetation are borrowed from the set of ‘The Gondoliers’. But there’s a full chorus, and the work is acted and choreographed as any other opera production. Costumes are modern evening /cocktail dresses for the women, and dark suits or suitable ceremonial attire for the men.
‘Utopia Limited’, written after ‘The Gondoliers’, has never had much of a life in the theatre. Its original length, the obscurity of some of its references, and the perceived lack of liveliness in some of its music told against it. I imagine that even the keenest Gilbert and Sullivan fan in this audience has never seen it before.
Yet there’s much to admire of both Gilbert and Sullivan here. The satire on British life and culture is filtered through the world view of the Utopians, an island race where the inhabitants live in a pleasant languorous style. The genial King has developed a respect for what he considers the English way of life, and has engaged an English governess, Lady Sophy, for his two younger daughters, while his eldest daughter has been sent to England to finish her education. Catriona Hewitson as Princess Nekaya and Sioned Gwen Davies as Princess Kalyba respond with appropriately maidenly blushes and giggles to Lady Sophy’s instructions on the techniques of repelling a suitor. – a demonstration which the king requests them to “take to the marketplace” so as to educate his younger female subjects.
Yvonne Howard as Lady Sophy is one of the more experienced performers in the cast. Although described by her charges as a dragon she is a very genial version of the brisk mature contraltos of the earlier operas. She makes the most of the charming tuneful mezzo arias, and uses guile, rather than Katisha-like terror, to capture the King’s heart – she confesses that she’s long planned to marry a suitable monarch! (In the 1970s Doyly Carte recording, available on YouTube, the Lady Sophy has the traditional alto timbre)
Richard Suart, with a long career in G and S, has one of the best roles here. He is Scaphio, one of a pair of judges, but really backroom advisers who exert control over the King and the economy, largely to their own advantage. The set-up provides opportunities for witty dialogue and patter songs. He has an able foil in baritone Arthur Bruce, one of last year’s Scottish Opera Emerging Artists, revelling in the opportunity to play a “baddie”, as Phantis, his fellow conspirator. There’s much mileage in their discussions of schemes for personal enrichment while keeping in check the King’s natural desire to do good.
Help for Utopia is at hand when Princess Zara arrives with The Flowers of Progress, six eminent British dignitaries who will help restore the country’s fortunes. Among them is Captain Sir Edward Corcoran – given a quick reprise of his “What never? Well, hardly ever!” chorus from Pinafore. The most interesting is Mr Goldbury, a Company Promotor. Wearing a suitably rakish hat, and a fixed smile, he persuades the King that the only way to resolve the economy is for Utopia to become a limited company. Mark Nathan, an Emerging Artist in 2019-20 is a terrific performer. He has a starring role as Giuseppe in the Gondoliers, but his part tonight as a dodgy businessman gives him more to chew on. He leads the finale of Act 1 with an upbeat tune and the catchy chorus ‘The Joint Stock Company Act of Sixty-Two’. He has a strong baritone and considerable stage presence and is immediately at ease in the sometimes tricky acoustic of the Festival Theatre. In Act II he and another Flower, Lord Dramaleigh, give a further courtship lesson to the two younger princesses. Unsurprisingly he undermines the good work of Lady Sophy as he describes for them his ideal “Capital English Girl”. At “five foot 9 and eleven stone two” she sounds like a prototype of Joan Hunter Dunn – though resembling neither of tonight’s singers!
The female lead, Princess Zara, is a late arrival on the scene. Ellie Laugharne sings beautifully and gives a witty performance as a clever young woman, besotted by the physical charms of Captain Fitzbattleaxe, a rather dim Guard whom she brings back from England. She sees though Phantis and Scaphio and sends them packing, and eventually decides that introducing the English party political system will perfectly round off Utopia’s reformed society. The unworkable policies that one party introduces can immediately be repealed by the other party when it gains power.
Musically there is much to enjoy. Derek Clark who has arranged and abridged the original score points out Schubertian echoes in the melodies and rhythms of the work, and also notes the tuneful waltzes. There’s much fun to be had in Isabel Baquero’s choreography for these and other dances in the comic moves of the King and his courtiers. Pastiches of hymns are a Sullivan speciality, and here the unaccompanied chorus ‘Eagle High’ would befit an oratorio. The second act septet of the Flowers and the King as they hold a drawing room meeting “in English style” while accompanying themselves on tambourines is a catchy parody of a minstrel tune, and very funny.
‘Utopia Limited’ provides an enjoyable evening’s entertainment. Its preparation has been meticulously undertaken by the director, Stuart Maunders, and the conductor/arranger, Derek Clarke. It’s sung well by a company of singers who have been playing together in ‘The Gondoliers’ for a few weeks now. What it lacks for me is the typical G and S plot twist, the “most ingenious paradox” where an obscure law, a careless nursemaid or an accident of birth is finally revealed to resolve everyone’s problems. In his programme essay Maunders celebrates Utopia’s clearer plot, but for me that essential daftness is missing.
There was an appreciative audience for ‘Utopia Limited’ – as there was the following afternoon for ‘The Gondoliers’ matinee. However I wonder if Scottish Opera had decided to sell socially distanced seats the audience would have been somewhat larger. The Scottish orchestras have sold their distanced seating quickly and often to capacity in the Usher Hall and Queen’s Hall. For both performances, only the front three rows of the Stalls and Circle were full. Other seating was patchy, with many rows unfilled. It seems that many of the potential audience were deterred by the thought of sitting in close proximity to other people, and most were unimpressed by the offer of socially distanced seating only in the upper circle. The managements of Scottish Arts organisations have an unenviable task. But I think Scottish Opera have misjudged their audience, and many stayed at home who would have been happy to return to Scottish Opera in what they judged to be a safer environment.
