Ruddigore: The Witch's Curse

This delightful comic operetta is the 10th Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration. It parodies the stock melodrama and turns the moral absolutes of melodrama upside down: Good becomes bad, bad becomes good, and heroes take the easy way out.

The Baronet of Ruddigore, Sir Despard Murgatroyd, has inherited a family curse which forces him to commit a crime every day — or die in unimaginable agony. He hates the curse, doing his heinous misdeeds as early as possible, then doing good works for the rest of the day to compensate!

It’s a huge relief when his long-lost elder brother  - and true heir to the curse - Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd turns up. He has been masquerading as ‘Robin Oakapple’ and is about to be married to the primly perfect Rose Maybud.

Sir Despard insists that ‘Robin’ resumes his real identity as the Bad Baronet, which ruins his romance with Rose. But Sir Ruthven’s troubles really start when his crimes, so pathetic, drag his exasperated ancestors back from the dead to haunt him…