The Pirates of Penzance, Coliseum, London

Ever since Broadway reclaimed The Pirates of Penzance as one of its own back in the 1980s (Joseph Papp's rambunctious production had commercial success in New York and London), we've required that extra degree of pep from our Gilbert and Sullivan.

Ever since Broadway reclaimed The Pirates of Penzance as one of its own back in the 1980s (Joseph Papp's rambunctious production had commercial success in New York and London), we've required that extra degree of pep from our Gilbert and Sullivan. Times change, and G&S were nothing if not in tune with the times. Why, they even had the English establishment laughing at itself. That's something that Jonathan Miller caught brilliantly in his now perennially refreshing ENO production of The Mikado. He found ways to sharpen the satire for a modern audience. Like I say, times change.

So what is director Elijah Moshinsky doing clinging so diligently to Victorian values? Retro G&S? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Weren't the dynamic duo always one step ahead of their audience? My heart sank when I opened the programme and saw the cast list headed "Dramatis Personae", each name prefaced by their title, "Miss" or "Mr". My heart sank further when I turned the page and glimpsed an essay explaining how important the concept of "Duty" was in Victorian times. And my heart kept sinking. Michael Yeargan's Pollock's Toy Museum design set the tone for tweeness and we never looked back. Except we did look back. That was the problem.

There's a number in Mel Brooks' The Producers where the lyric goes something like "keep it light, keep it bright, keep it gay". Ah, if only Max Bialystock could have had his wicked way with this production. It's the wrong kind of camp, you see. You can't play the piece for its period charm, you can't keep it "straight", as it were, and as gay as a frigate's pennant. When the pirate apprentice Frederic refers to his "effective but alarming costume" I'm not sure we'd have been talking pink hat and lime silk brocade jacket with sequinned skull and cross-bones back in 1879. Actually, Anne Tilby's pretty costumes are one of the best reasons for seeing the show. The other is Mark Shanahan's conducting, which shapes and points Sullivan's delicious tunes so surely and fondly and wittily.

Moshinsky doesn't do wit. His staging (with lame choreography from Terry John Bates) doesn't do much at all. He's what I call a "tableaux" director. But what was desperately needed here was physical ingenuity, visual humour, ideas. Long stretches of Act I barely raised a titter, and most of those were prompted by a gentleman in the stage-left box, whose problems with a hearing-enhancing headset were loudly relayed to his companion.

It was also unfortunate that the Pirate King (Karl Daymond), while looking the part, had little singing voice, and even that was ill focused and ill pitched. Mark Wilde (Frederic) and Victoria Joyce (Mabel) sang prettily, though the size of the house did neither of them any favours. Their duet "Stay, Frederic, Stay" - one of Sullivan's loveliest creations - was touching for being truthful.

If only the comedy had fared as well. Jean Rigby's piratical maid Ruth worked so hard getting the words across, I thought she was going to put her jaw out; Peter Rose played up (or down) "the common touch" as the Sergeant of Police; and Richard Suart's "modern" Major-General Stanley showed everybody up. He alone gave the old dialogue a lift; he alone filled the stage. And it needed filling, believe me.

To 15 February (020-7632 8300)