Scottish Opera, ‘Pop-Up Opera’, Inverness, review: Gilbert & Sullivan, but faster and leaner

Performing arts companies may still be living under a cloud of Covid uncertainty, but Scottish Opera is an organisation firing on all cylinders. Its latest filmed opera, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, begins streaming online on Thursday, and its major production of Verdi’s Falstaff (directed by Sir David McVicar) premieres in the company’s outdoor auditorium in Glasgow on July 3.

Meanwhile, its latest ‘Pop-Up Opera’, consisting of excerpts from works by Gilbert and Sullivan, has just begun its extensive tour in Inverness. A cast of just five performers (two singers, two musicians and a narrator) is taking a repertoire of half-hour truncations of The Mikado, Iolanthe and The Gondoliers to the Isle of Lewis in the north, the town of Hawick in the south, and many points in between.

It used to be said that all the live arts required for success was “bare boards and passion”. All Scottish Opera requires, it seems, is a lorry trailer and performers who are prepared to brave whatever the notoriously variable Scottish weather throws at them. Their latest tour began in the car park of Eden Court Theatre in Inverness. Physical distancing between audience members was ensured by chairs being placed inside plastic hoops on the ground.

On a trailer decorated with nothing more than a series of comic caricatures of Gilbert and Sullivan characters, storyteller Allan Dunn, attired as if in 19th-century Japan, provides us with brief and humorous outlines of the narrative of The Mikado, which knit together a healthy selection of songs from this most popular Savoy opera.

The fine baritone Andrew McTaggart delights with his expressive singing of the famous songs ‘A Wand’ring Minstrel I’ and ‘Behold the Lord High Executioner!’ The fact that, in a trice, he has shifted character from Nanki-Poo, the wayward Mikado’s son, to Ko-Ko, the newly-empowered Lord High Executioner, is entirely in keeping with the production’s deliberately severe economy.

As Dunn rushes the tale along with the aid of beautifully illustrated storyboards, a virtue is made of necessity, as he jokes that the budget provides not for the opera’s famous trio of maids, but only for one. Cellist Andrew Drummond Huggan and guitarist Sasha Savaloni then proceed to perform an accomplished and jaunty instrumental version of the much-loved ‘Three Little Maids from School’.

When she’s not being sidelined by the lack of the requisite number of maids, soprano Stephanie Stanway gives a lovely performance as the put upon Yum-Yum. The highlight of the show, however, is a cleverly updated version of the satirical number ‘I’ve Got a Little List’, which is as topical as a new episode of Have I Got News for You? Gilbert and Sullivan would, one suspects, have approved entirely.

On the opening day, the abbreviated Mikado was partnered with an equally radically reduced Iolanthe. This satirical fairy tale may be less widely known than The Mikado, but it is told by the same means, with Stanway excelling as both the titular, miscreant fairy and the much-desired shepherdess Phyllis.

These ‘Pop-Up Operas’ are tremendously good fun, and a testament to Scottish Opera’s determination to serve communities throughout the country. Their extreme brevity, no doubt, reflects a duty of care to audiences (especially given the vagaries of the Scottish climate). Even so, one fears, that succinctness will still leave many artistic appetites somewhat underfed.

Touring until August 25. Tickets: scottishopera.org.uk; 0141 248 4567