Golden Oldies

‘Levelling up’ (or not, if it affects important people) is Pinafore’s hottest topic. Another is patriotism – or, rather the jingoism (the word dates from 1878) triggered by Disraeli’s dispatch of the Royal Navy to the Black Sea to deter a Russian-led annexation of Turkish territories, as Europe teetered on the edge of war in the winter of 1877-78.

Disraeli’s First Lord of the Admiralty was Tory placeman and millionaire newsagent WH Smith. As Gilbert’s own First Lord, Sir Joseph Porter KCB, advises, ‘Stick close your desk and never go to sea/And you all may be Rulers of the Queen’s Navee’.

It’s unlikely nowadays that a Prime Minster, even Boris Johnson, would appoint a media man to oversee the Admiralty. Though wasn’t there that ex-BBC fellow, Grayling, who ended up as Lord Chancellor, and later managed to oversee the payment of £13.8m for the hire of ferries from a ferry company that had none? No wonder the Holland Park audience chuckled and guffawed.

The text hasn’t dated; nor has the musical method. Pinafore doesn’t need a tap-dancing cabin boy (McCrystal’s big idea) to freshen it up. As Holland Park’s singer-director John Savournin, knows only too well, it was created, musically and verbally, in a spirit of comic hyperbole. Master the stage choreography Pinafore’s music-hall conventions demand, and the thing plays itself.

You need the right singer-actors, which Holland Park certainly had. Llio Evans even managed to bring off that spoof aria of indecision where Sullivan has Josephine quote Leonore’s ‘Abscheulicher!’ from Beethoven’s Fidelio. Is nothing sacred, one asks? Happily not.

The ubiquitous Mr Savournin played Captain Corcoran, his role in McCrystal’s ENO show. Meanwhile, he’d been seen at the Grange Festival as Sir Richard Cholmondeley in Christopher Luscombe’s staging of The Yeomen of the Guard.

Sullivan thought this one of his best scores. For me, it’s one of his dullest. He hankered after seriousness, but it rarely worked: witness his opera Ivanhoe.

What redeems Yeomen is the character of the itinerant jester Jack Point, who’s left in the lurch when his longtime lady friend goes off with a handsome young colonel.

The great George Grossmith created the role – and casting is key. Where ENO blundered by having former Family Fortunes presenter Les Dennis as Sir Joseph Porter (another Grossmith creation), the theatrically savvy Luscombe struck gold with experienced comic hand Nick Haverson playing Point as a kind of hyperactive Max Wall. A glorious performance.

Only one thing jarred. Gilbert said that Point’s end should be left to the audience’s imagination. Grossmith played his collapse either for laughs or as an essay in comic pathos. Here Point simply puts a rope round his neck and pulls a lever marked ‘the drop’. Even Gilbert, who was fascinated by executions, might have blenched at that.

GOLDEN OLDIES RACHEL JOHNSON SAD SONGS SAY SO MUCH

Mumford & Sons. Folksy fiddle band almost as big as Coldplay, all whiskers and waistcoats.

The big news is that lead singer and big dog – Marcus Mumford, you know, married to actress Carey Mulligan – has gone solo pro tem, and … crumbs. Well.

His album, Self-Titled, is about the child abuse he suffered as a boy of six, and – trigger warning – he doesn’t hold back.

The first time I heard Cannibal, I had to press pause on the track as I couldn’t believe how raw and explicit it was. The rest of the album – out on 18th September – explores the experience of talking about it for the first time, and the possibilities of forgiveness towards his abusers. But let’s start with Cannibal.

Listen to the audio and then watch the video, which is directed by Steven Spielberg. Mumford sits in an empty school gym and sings the unflinching words that made my flesh crawl.

He can still taste his abuser – ‘and I hate it’, he tells his listeners. He rages against the fact that none of what happened was his choice – ‘and you knew it’ – and he felt ripped apart as if by a cannibal.

As the camera pans away, and he acknowledges the pain of realising ‘There’s still some sick part of it that thrills me’, we are engulfed by his awareness of the destructive power of his own body’s unwilling reaction.

And then, at three minutes into the four, the song breaks open, we get to the bridge, the energy spills and surges into the silent school gym, and the camera zooms into close-up. Marcus has been released. His truth has set him free.

It’s intense. But he’s OK, and we’re OK.

Grace is about telling his folks about it all. Background: his parents moved in during lockdown. Mumford’s mum overheard Cannibal’s melody as he noodled in his studio. Then he played her the song.

‘Can I ask what it is about?’ she said.

At the beginning, I found this album a hard listen. But it’s beautiful. It’s catchy. And very of the moment.

Writers are urged to write what they know. Self-Titled proves that singersongwriters of the extraordinary calibre of Marcus Mumford can only succeed if they sing what they feel.

In fact, this album is what chaps like Marcus were put on this earth to do. I loathe it when people say ‘everything happens for a reason’ – but what happened to a boy aged six has led to an album that will be listened to and will bring joy – and pain – long after both he and his abusers are pushing up daisies.

Captain Corcoran (John Savournin) (left) and Jack Point (Nick Haverson) in The Yeomen of the Guard Marcus Mumford performing with Mumford & Sons at the Roundhouse, 2015