Berwick Festival Opera: The Mikado

Berwick Festival Opera season gets off to an exuberant start with a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan's madcap masterpiece. The Mikado includes some of their most wonderful melodies, and crackles with a light-hearted wit, verbal dexterity and comic understatement that's guaranteed to make the whole family laugh out loud.

Our journey starts in modern Japan. Through the miracles of cosplay and anime we move into a fabulous computer game Titipu where points mean prizes - Yum Yum! - and failure is deadly. All the familiar characters have crucial roles to play - a hapless executioner, a prince disguised as a wandering minstrel, a minister with his finger in every single pie, and those three little maids from school - as lovers reunite, those in charge are shown to be anything but, and the older generation are deftly outplayed by the young.

The Japanese location allowed W S Gilbert to ruthlessly satirise British politics under the thin veneer of an exotically oriental setting.