First step: remove that bent-over, tottering Porter aunt she’s an ageist embarrassment, and not worth the final gag that despatches her. Unlike his all-fizzing ENO Iolanthe, though, McCrystal’s Pinafore doesn’t always work. But it’s even more classically compact, rolls along beautifully under conductor Chris Hopkins' more-than-able steering from a sentimental-brisk Overture to the final happy chorus (the late Charles Mackerras would have approved), and hits all its marks deftly. When I was lucky enough to share a pre-performance talk with the great Mike Leigh, he declared that Pinafore wasn’t a patch on its successor, The Pirates of Penzance, which he was then staging for ENO.

Anything else that needs to be said is wickedly stitched in by McCrystal’s extra dialogue and visual japes (yes, not-so-great-Britain's Horror Clown makes an appearance). And that “if you want to rise to the top of the tree…Stick close to your desks and never go to sea/And you all may be rulers of the Queen’s na-vee” (words which my 10-year-old performing self didn’t quite grasp, but which, now that I’m older, sadder and wiser, I see can be applied to just about every cabinet minister unfit for the sphere he or she dominates). That love should level all ranks but doesn’t (so much for levelling up). That a British sailor’s “energetic fist should be ready to resist/A dictatorial word” (violence for equality).