We have a lot to thank Gilbert and Sullivan for. It's probably true to say that without G&S we'd have no Rodgers and Hammerstein, no Andrew Lloyd-Webber, no Stephen Sondheim. No musical theatre as we know it, in fact.

Every minute of The Mikado is there for a reason. It's a well-oiled farce with toe-curlingly good tunes, brilliant (and ever-evolving) libretto and absolutely no message at all.

And Carl Rosa's production pretty much lives up to that – with one major downfall, but more of that later.

First, let's talk Nichola McAuliffe. Here we have a doddery, middle-aged woman, tripping over her words and holding her silences – both to brilliant comic effect. Frankly, for a character that's onstage for barely twenty minutes in total, this show belongs to her.

Sylvester McCoy gurns his way through the title-role and when good is brilliant. But he's also been given some puerile and, frankly, embarrassing business around the word 'Titipu' which should be re-thought. Nice work, too, from Fenton Gray (KoKo), Gareth Jones (an excellent Pooh-Bah) and Victoria Ward as Pitti-Sing.

The get-up-and-go of the ensemble, however, had got-up-and-gone. An appalling display of lacklustre and sloppily-executed musical numbers gave the impression that they'd really rather be elsewhere.