HAD Sir William Schwenck Gilbert been alive today, I would take money on his including the latest and plupenultimate president of the United States and his South African top-line-of-keyboard-iconic tech bro sidekick, as well as those for whom personal pronouns are more important than personal relationships, in his brilliant patter songs … so thank goodness he has Jeff Clarke to do it for him.

Jeff’s Opera della Luna, formed in 1994, won a keen and regular audience in the south west region with its annual visits to Iford Opera. Now the company has moved to larger theatres and a year-round repertoire, its hilarious take on traditional light opera has found equally eager new audiences, some of whom packed into Bath Theatre Royal for the opening night of the latest manifestation of The Mikado.

With a pared-down cast (just seven singers) and the return of the marvellously colourful and inventive costumes and sets designed by Gabriella Csanyi-Wills, this is a treat for the eyes and the ears (which had better be kept wide open for every new and topical allusion, including those obviously made impromptu, particularly by Matthew Scott Clark’s inspired KoKo. This production opens in a Far Eastern tailoring shop, with its colourful bales of fabric and its Singer-type sewing machines.

The story is, of course, preposterous. Ko Ko is a cheap tailor, gangly, younger-than-usual, flailing about in a plaid suit and still amazed that he has been saved from the gallows (to which he was sentenced for flirting) and now made Lord High Executioner. Somewhere along the way he has been made guardian of a pretty young thing (Yum Yum) and intends to marry her.

But she has spotted a rather bad second trombone player in the local band, and they have fallen in love. This “musician” is in fact Nanki-Poo, the son of the Mikado, ruler of all Japan. He has estranged himself from his family because his dad wants him to marry Katisha, an elderly stateswoman, who just happens to be the spit image of Joan Collins in a rather magnificent outfit.

You never come away from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera without a head full of earworms, and a lasting wonderment that Sir Arthur Sullivan managed to write SO MANY tuneful ditties. Opera della Luna’s cast – Steve Watts’s Mikado, Robert Forrest’s Nanki Poo, Kelli Ann Masterson’s Yum Yum, Louise Crane’s Katisha, local favourite Lynsey Docherty bringing her signature comedy to the role of Pitti Sing and Carl Sanderson’s marvellously pompous flouncing Pooh Bah, along with the very different and funny KoKo – turn up the revs on every famous number. The Merry Madrigal has the audience in suspended fits, just one example of how a company can work together to bring maximum delight, comedy and what often looks like improvised inspiration to guild the lilies of the timeless works of Gilbert and Sullivan.

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Photographs by Phil Tragen