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Opera

Do you see me laughing? Mike Leigh’s Pirates of Penzance at the ENO reviewed

Designer Alison Chitty provides the necessary visual volume but elsewhere there’s too much timidity - especially from Leigh

16 May 2015

9:00 AM

16 May 2015

9:00 AM

The Pirates of Penzance

English National Opera, in rep until 4 July

Forget the pollsters and political pundits — English National Opera called it first and called it Right when it programmed Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance to open just days after the general election. Who else is the target audience for an operetta that guilelessly proclaims, ‘We love our House of Peers’, and celebrates both the dynastic possibilities of marriage and the material aspirations of a Major-General who bought his ancestors along with his faux-baronial castle, if not Tories (shy or otherwise)? But if ENO has hit a political home run, the same can’t be said artistically of a...

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