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Rating: 
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: I love Iolanthe. I was, therefore, very disappointed by this production. Although it was obvious that much thought (and money) had gone into preparation of the scenery, costuming, staging, etc., still it never quite worked. Especially in the beginning, the singing seemed off-key, and even a little bit off-beat. I thought the fairies all the way through looked and acted silly, as did the peers. Where did all that hand-waving come from? And the scenery became boring as scene after scene was acted in what looked like church pews and around papier-mache statues. And why were the Lord Chancellor and the two lords in bed together???One of the things I love about G&S is the sublime juxtaposition of intensely emotional, musically beautiful moments and silly scenes that shatter the emotion and scatter all seriousness. I don't think this entire production ever rose above silly--the actors were all self-consciously ridiculous. My favorite scene, where Iolanthe pleads with the Lord Chancellor--willingly sacrificing her life for her son's happiness, to the accompanying lamentation of the women's choir--was entirely spoiled by the pace of the music, which was rushed, and by the sight of feet and hands waving around above the aforesaid pews in a senseless manner. The eruption of the fairies into the scene did not break the enchanted mood. There was no mood to break. The fairies as ballerinas didn't work well, either. And the peers, even in their first entrance, which is a marvelous piece of stately music, never had even the slightest hint of dignity--which ruins the audience's "aha!" recognition that they are very silly indeed. Strephon, Iolanthe, and Phyllis were well-cast and well-sung, but couldn't save this plodding production.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent singing spoiled by poor direction
Review: The musical performance was excellent. However, instead of simply recording a performance, the director decided to be "creative" which resulted in a rather disjointed presentation.This would be better as music CD without the "cute" distractions of the video.
Rating: 
Summary: Not THAT bad, actually.
Review: Unlike the more 'universal' works of, say, Wagner or Verdi, the Savoy operas are so time-, society- and culture-specific (late Victorian England: the Law, the Empire, the Parliament etc.) that you cannot modernise them without doing a great deal of damage. This means retaining heavy, pageant-like costumes and sets and a rigid style of vocal delivery, which usually leads to the kind of stodgy mausoleum staging that puts so many people off Gilbert and Sullivan. One way around this problem is to play around with form. This charming film of arguably G&S's greatest work is thoroughly traditional in its staging, but takes a great deal of liberties with (admittedly cheap) special effects as it tries to approximate a gossamer fairy world intruding on the heavy formalism of the House of Lords. Strange camera angles, playful acting, witty bits of business, cheeky choreography and mock newsreel footage add up to a lively, if crude, performance, while retaining all the traditional pleasures - Gilbert's glorious word-play; his devastating social satire and mocking of popular modes of sensational and sentimental melodrama; Sullivan's brilliant tightrope act between parody and emotion. The sense of nightmare inherent in Gilbert's story of a Lord Chancellor whose love for his ward provokes the enmity of the Fairy World and the dissolution of his identity and the social assumptions he has long based on it, is brought brilliantly alive in the sequence near the end of Act 1 when the fairies engulf the Chamber; while the homosocial world Gilbert portrayed - playing on both meanings of the word 'fairy' - is deliciously foregrounded.
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