HMS Pinafore (or The Lass That Loved a Sailor) @ Wiltons Music Hall - Those infectious tunes, that beautifully libretto, perfectly staged ->

Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see Sasha Regan’s fabulous all-male production of HMS Pinafore at the equally fabulous Wiltons Music Hall in London’s glitzy East End.

Regan’s inventive reimagining of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s fourth collaboration and first international blockbuster is fun, camp, fantastically sung and danced, and a joy to watch. And all that muscle on display!

The Captain’s daughter, Josephine (Sam Kipling), is caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea when she falls for lower class sailor Ralph Rackstraw (Danny Becker), but the Captain (Juan Jackson) wishes for her to marry the upstanding Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty (David McKechnie). Will Josephine follow her heart or honour her father’s wish?

The plot is silly, sure, but the audience are carried along with all the sheer bonhomie in the room. The performers seamlessly and hilariously switch from burly, surly sailors to their ‘lady’ visitors; the cousins and the sisters and the aunts.

And with those infectious tunes and that beautifully constructed libretto, it is a charming comic operetta perfectly staged.

If you get a chance go see. It ends this Saturday.