HMS PINAFORE

Theatre at the Tabard

★★★★★

“small-scale theatre at its very best: warm, witty, and quietly extraordinary”

The Tabard’s H.M.S. Pinafore, a follow-up from the same creative team behind last season’s much-loved Mikado, is the rarest of theatrical conjuring tricks: a production so thoroughly delightful you forget it has no orchestra, no ensemble of dozens, and a notable absence of rigging, given its setting on a Royal Navy warship. For all its ultra-low budget limitations, this production is not merely charming. It is enchanting.

Director Keith Strachan corrals Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1878 satire on class, love and social hierarchy into an intimate ninety-six-seat space with a confidence that borders on cheek. Captain Corcoran’s daughter Josephine (played by Stevie Jennings-Adams) is in love with the humble sailor Ralph Rackstraw (Finan McKinney). Her father (Leopold Benedict) has grander designs, in the form of Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty (John Griffiths). A harbour trader with her secret of mistaken identities does the rest.

The standout is Gloria Acquaah-Harrison’s Little Buttercup. Warm and mischievous, she gives the dockside vendor a rich emotional centre that anchors every scene she touches. With the plot hinging on her secret, Acquaah-Harrison provides both glint and genuine feeling.

Equally remarkable is Marissa Landy as Cousin Hebe. When she is not delivering tart comic timing in the chorus, she picks up a flute to provide half the score, and at one point breaks into a tap routine with such joy that the audience cheered. To sing, dance and play in one performance is graft elevated to high art. Kieran Wynn’s Bosun and Ryan Erikson Downey as Dick Deadeye round out the company with cheerful aplomb.

The sublime score is carried by Landy’s flute and Musical Director Annemarie Lewis Thomas at the piano. Sullivan’s tunes emerge as bright and shapely as ever.

Gilbert and Sullivan was always meant for rooms like this. In Victorian times the score travelled the Empire in sheet music, sung by families round the parlour piano and in British clubs from Calcutta to Cape Town. This production sits squarely in that tradition. It is conventional, too, to tweak the lyrics to the moment; here the music itself has been gently rearranged for the company’s gifts, with doo-wop renderings of old favourites. The entire evening was a delight.

What the production lacks in budget it more than answers in invention. There is a particularly clever moment during “He Is an Englishman” when the audience waves Union Jacks, while the cast brandish flags reflecting their own heritage, for example a Scot raises the Saltire. Watching it, I understood for the first time the irony of how the high-Victorian expressions of patriotism that Gilbert lampooned in 1878 inspired the nationalisms that undid the empire. From the first rumblings of Irish Home Rule in the 1880s to the long road that led, eventually, to Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the idea of a separate state for India’s Muslims, it was the British who showed them how to do it. Patriotism, it turns out, is contagious.

This is small-scale theatre at its very best: warm, witty, and quietly extraordinary.

HMS PINAFORE

Theatre at the Tabard

Reviewed on 7th May 2026

by Elizabeth Botsford

Photography by Matt Hunter

HMS PINAFORE

★★★

“The cast appear to be constantly fighting to maintain the dynamics against an unchanging, and quite dire, backdrop of what sounds like a cheap Casio keyboard”

Jules Verne’s classic nineteenth century novel, “Around The World In Eighty Days”, despite containing over a hundred characters, crossing eight countries using six trains, five boats and an elephant has inspired many stage adaptations over the years; undaunted, in the spirit of its main character, Phileas Fogg, by the challenges. The latest is Phil Willmott’s musical running at the Union Theatre. Although Willmott has been closely associated with the venue of late, especially with his ‘Essential Classics’ series earlier this year, this production is staged independently of him.

As with all well-worn stories, we all know the ending and so the onus is on the maxim that the journey is more fun than the destination; and it is clear from this punchy production that the cast are taking this to heart and patently enjoying themselves as they follow Fogg’s race against time to circumnavigate the world. There is a warm energy between Sam Peggs’ adventuring Fogg and Connor Hughes’ Passepartout as man and servant. Peggs neatly conveys the self-important imperialism of his character, dismissing other people, and other cultures, as mere dressing for his heroism. What he lacks, though, is the sense of satire inherent in Verne’s writing.

But we are not here for social commentary. This is billed as a fun filled musical comedy and, for the most part, the company and audience embrace this. There’s a star turn from Ceris Hine who adopts multiple roles with easy versatility; from a jaded, Scottish-born Moulin Rouge chanteuse to the upper-class wide-eyed Miss Fotherington. While in between practically stealing the show with her hilariously understated, blink-and-you-miss-it, portrayal of the birds and the wind that steer Fogg’s hot air balloon across the continent.

The music is full of crowd pleasers, particularly the anthemic overture which shows off the strong ensemble singing and sets the spirit of optimism that pervades the show. It is a shame, though, that the sound mix often makes it difficult to appreciate the music. The backing is frequently lost. While this is understandable within a score that swings from rousing choruses to intimate ballads, what is unforgivable is the musical arrangement. The cast appear to be constantly fighting to maintain the dynamics against an unchanging, and quite dire, backdrop of what sounds like a cheap Casio keyboard. I don’t know how this lack of respect, for Willmott’s songs and Annemarie Lewis Thomas’ score, wasn’t addressed during rehearsals.

That aside, Brendan Matthew’s direction keeps the energy throughout and the strong cast maintain the stamina and vitality to navigate the numerous and sometimes fantastically fast costume changes. There is enough magic and inventiveness to keep us going and, despite the various hurdles, we are ultimately glad we stayed the journey.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Mark Senior

Tag Archives: Annemarie Lewis Thomas

HMS PINAFORE

★★★★★

Theatre at the Tabard

HMS PINAFORE

Theatre at the Tabard

★★★★★

“small-scale theatre at its very best: warm, witty, and quietly extraordinary”