First performed in 1893, Utopia, Limited was Gilbert and Sullivan’s penultimate opera. Less immediately successful than its predecessors, it divided opinion in its day, and remains an unknown quantity for many. Depicting an imaginary island so obsessed with British values that, under (specifically) English influence, it sets itself up, monarchy and all, as a limited company under the 1862 Companies Act, it satirises the privatisation of public institutions, as well as sideswiping at both the “parliamentary peculiarities” of party politics and a press fixated on royal scandal.
Dramatically it meanders a bit, and the colonialist assumptions that underpin it now render some of it suspect. It also, however, contains some of Sullivan’s loveliest music, and Scottish Opera have taken it into their repertory, albeit with some pruning, as a companion piece to their production of The Gondoliers, first seen in Glasgow and Edinburgh last year, and now on tour in London.
Directed by Stuart Maunder and conducted by Derek Clark, it’s billed as a semi-staging, though it’s considerably more than that. Using the Act Two Gondoliers set, it’s effectively a full modern-dress production in which the suits and cocktail frocks worn at the start are gradually replaced by posh tail coats and ball gowns as Anglicisation takes over. Well aware that you don’t need to send up something that is already a send-up, Maunder plays it relatively straight, and it’s beautifully acted and sung by a classy ensemble cast.
Ben McAteer makes a fine King Paramount, well-meaning, dithering and longing to be free of his two pushy advisers, Scaphio and Phantis, a classy double act from Richard Suart and Arthur Bruce. Charlie Drummond is the Girton-educated Princess Zara, in love with William Morgan’s uptight Captain Fitzbattleaxe of the First Life Guards: they sound good together in Words of Love Too Loudly Spoken, the most exquisite love duet in Sullivan’s output. Yvonne Howard, meanwhile, is outstanding and extraordinarily sympathetic as the principled Lady Sophy, in love with Paramount, but alarmed and saddened by newspaper gossip about his private life. Clark conducts with admirable grace and wit. Playing and choral singing are both exceptional.