Why Mike Leigh loves G&S

Mike Leigh, who is directing The Pirates of Penzance for the ENO, talks to The Times about why he thinks Glibert and Sullivan are underrated geniuses:

'The inscription of WS Gilbert’s memorial on the Thames Embankment in London reads “His Foe was Folly, and his Weapon Wit”. This is too coy. Gilbert saw the world as a chaotic place in which our lives are brutal accidents of birth, fate and human blunder, a jungle of confusion and delusion, where we all aspire to be other than what we are, and where nobody is really who or what they seem to be. Power. Status. Rank. Duty. Hypocrisy and affectation. Youth and old age. Gilbert’s obsessions inform all these operas, his greatest being the arbitrary nature of society’s absurd rules and regulations...'

 Read the rest of Leigh's fascinating article here at www.thetimes.co.uk.

For your own slice of local G&S, don't forget to order your tickets for our June production of HMS Pinafore by clicking on our order button. For more booking info see here.

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