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The Guardian
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Trial by Jury/A Matter of Misconduct! review – gags and Spads in Scottish Opera's sparkling double bill
Ten years after conductor Stuart Stratford left Opera Holland Park to begin a stabilising and fruitful relationship as Scottish Opera's music director, the traffic this summer is in the other direction in a trio of co-productions, originating in Scotland, with D'Oyly Carte Opera a third partner. As John Savournin's broad and brassy The Merry Widow tours across Scotland before its London transfer, this new double bill adds a 150th anniversary revival of Gilbert and Sullivan's first success and a contemporary political satire to a colourful package. Savournin also directs Trial By Jury, which swaps the courtroom for a TV studio in a sparkling update that is more Jerry Springer than Judge Judy. Patter-song master Richard Suart is The Learned Judge – who eventually gets the girl, jilted bride Angelina (soprano Kira Kaplan) – and company favourite Jamie MacDougall is on his best camp form as the Defendant, Edwin. Kally Lloyd-Jones gives the Bridesmaids, led by Amy J Payne, some laugh-out-loud geriatric cheerleader choreography to complement their outrageous frocks, and the jurors' diverse costuming runs the gamut from lab coat and dress kilt to TV-am sweater and perm. Edward Jowle (as Floor Manager/Usher) is one of a quartet of young singers on the company's Emerging Artists programme given the chance to shine in both shows. In the pit, Toby Hession conducts a swaggering account of Sullivan's music; Hession is also the composer of the double bill's new operetta set in the press room at No 9 Downing Street. His score also owes debts to Sondheim and John Adams and plays with its heritage stylishly in Laura Attridge's production. Hession and librettist Emma Jenkins have been nurtured through short pieces for Scottish Opera's small-scale touring and A Matter of Misconduct! is a sophisticated extension of those projects, with baritone Ross Cumming as ambitious politician Roger Penistone (fnar, fnar) and mezzo Chloe Harris his wife, Cherry, a would-be wellness guru (or 'Poundshop Paltrow'). There are gags aplenty at the expense of politicians in Westminster and Holyrood, and possibly the first operatic rhyming of both 'vaginal dryness' and 'clitoral stimulator', but this pacy piece also finds room for some stratospheric coloratura from Kaplan as sassy lawyer Sylvia Lawless, and a lovely duet for the rather unlovely central couple. Tenor MacDougall, as Malcolm Tucker-esque Spad, Sandy Hogg, handles the score's trickier music with aplomb. At Theatre Royal, Glasgow, on 16 May. Then at Festival theatre, Edinburgh, on 30 May and 6 June and Opera Holland Park, London, on 24 and 26 June.
Telegraph
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Trial by Jury/A Matter of Misconduct!: Sparky proof that musical comedy is tricky to get right
Operetta rules in the current season at Scottish Opera: following the well-received Merry Widow comes a sparky double-bill of satire old and new, combining Gilbert and Sullivan's first hit, Trial by Jury of 1875, with the newly commissioned A Matter of Misconduct!, written by librettist Emma Jenkins and conductor Toby Hession around the topical travails of a scandal-hit politician. They make for a pungent and diverting couple of hours with plenty of laughs, even if they both prove that musical comedy is the most tricky of genres. The barbs of Gilbert's wit still hit their mark, in the judge's account of his rapid rise to fame, and his prejudiced running of this case of a breach of promise of marriage, so that he ends up with the jilted bride. But it is Sullivan's fluent, perfectly judged score that brings the story to life, with its effortless parodies of the opera composers of his day. The funny thing about parodies is that they are often just as hilarious if you don't know their origins; I loved Trial by Jury as a boy, long before I knew the Bellini ensemble sent up in 'A nice dilemma we have here'. In this modest updating by John Savourin, the courtroom has been turned into a TV game show (allowing a couple of female jurors, and a female Counsel to the Plaintiff), with Richard Stuart's frisky judge as its centrepiece on Wednesday, classically enunciated but no longer quite secure enough of pitch. The insouciant lyricism needed from the dastardly defendant Edwin was beyond Jamie MacDougall, so he blustered, while his opposite number the plaintiff Kira Kaplan won all hearts. A Matter of Misconduct! revolves round Sylvia Lawless's attempts at reputation management as Roger Penistone (the flamboyant Ross Cumming), candidate for the leadership of the party, copes with his errant wife Cherry, a wellness guru with a touch of Gwyneth and Meghan (Chloe Harris). The two pieces have overlapping casts, which on the night showed versatility but proved too demanding – in the second piece, MacDougall's Alastair Campbell/The Thick of It Scotsman was excellently hard-hitting, while Kaplan's frosty Lawless was too stretched by a range whose frequent top notes stopped the words working. Edward Jowie as Usher and then Press Secretary was strong in both pieces. There was positive audience reaction for some Scots-oriented jokes about motorhomes, but the tone shifted uneasily in a winsome husband-and-wife scene for the Penistones, 'Can we make it work?', where Toby Hession's effective motorik film-music score shifted into sub-Sondheim mode. Direction in both pieces, by Savourin in Trial by Jury and Laura Attridge in A Matter of Misconduct!, was slick and tight-knit, with designs by takis and lighting by Ben Pickersgill. Toby Hession conducted both pieces with flair, and D'Oyly Carte Opera were co-producers, taking the G&S legacy into a new generation. Further performances in Glasgow on May 16, Edinburgh on May 30 and June 6 and Opera Holland Park on June 24-26;
