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Stage review All aboard for this daffy crowd-pleaser
The Guardian
|December 06, 2025
When HMS Pinafore premiered in 1878, audiences would have appreciated a particularly topical lampoon skewering the First Lord of the Admiralty, WH Smith, a man who, much like Gilbert’s Sir Joseph Porter, ascended the greasy pole of politics without a shred of nautical experience.
Smith’s name lives on in the newsagent chain, while English National Opera’s laugh-out-loud staging looks elsewhere for its targets in an energetic show that takes the idea of the running gag to a whole new level.
This story is from the December 06, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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