This blog post was written by Maris Tiller, SCRC Research Services GRA. Maris a Graduate student pursuing her Master’s in Creative Writing with a concentration in fiction.
Among the books and manuscripts found within SCRC’s archives, there are also artworks and artifacts. One such artifact is this prop, which belongs to our extensive theater collection, dubbed by our staff as the “corgi skateboard”.
It was known that this item was donated by David and Annabelle Stone as part of our Gilbert and Sullivan collection. It was assumed that this was a prop used in one of many revivals of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, which turned out to be correct! However, the 1992 production of Princess Ida that the corgi prop was a part, turned out to be a more atypical Gilbert and Sullivan performance than initially thought.
The 1992 English National Opera production of Princess Ida was directed by Ken Russell, a British filmmaker and theater director. Primarily, Russell was known for his films, stirring controversy with sexually provocative scenes and blasphemous imagery. His 1971 film, The Devils, is still widely unavailable in a restored, uncut version because of how Russell chose, through the lens of the “demon possessions” of Loudun, to critique the Catholic church. His persistent desire to stir the pot of what was acceptable or over-the-top in films made him a controversial figure in British cinema.
Regardless of his career-spanning controversies, Russell continued to make films with moderate critical and commercial success, becoming a staple of the British film industry. Early critical success with his adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love – a film which garnered him several Oscar nominations and one win – and later commercial success with Tommy, an adaptation of The Who’s rock opera of the same name, allowed him artistic freedom not often awarded to such controversial artists. In addition to this, Russell’s cult film successes with the likes of Crimes of Passion and The Lair of the White Worm kept him in cultural conversation.
Russell also occasionally dabbled in theater and opera. As with his films, he was known for making bold, strange visual choices in his translations of classic plays and operas. In one instance, Russel adapted La Boheme for the stage and decided to incorporate Nazi imagery into the set design as well as a giant replica of the Savage Messiah statue. The aesthetic choices made in Russell’s theater productions, as often occurred, were not incorporated into the text of the opera. Instead, they served just a visual element of the performance, leaving many fans of the opera feeling confused. This was a trend in late Ken Russell’s work in general: aesthetic choices meant to be provocative, but which instead came off as confusing or distracting.
Thus, we come to the context of our corgi skateboard. The original text of Princess Ida does not involve dogs in any form. However, Russell, who, as established, enjoyed playing around with social commentary, transformed the character of King Hildebrand into a parody of Prince Charles. So, Russell also includes Queen Elizabeth’s corgis in the production, even though a character parallel to the queen herself does not appear in the play. Only one review in the Herald and Times points out this detail, mentioning, “skateboards disguised unconvincingly as corgi dogs”.Other reviewers were far more occupied by other strange decisions made by Russell, such as his choice to set the play in an English-Japanese hybrid theme park called the Buck’N’Yen Palace (get it?) and the fact that the chorus members wear massive fake ears throughout for unexplained reasons. Notably, the ears are included as an element of the design of the poster for the show.
Ultimately, Russell’s production of Princess Ida was not successful. Critics were baffled by his production design choices, changes to the score, and haphazard modernizations. Contemporary reviews talk of the show being a confusing waste of three hours, bringing up set and costuming details to question why they were there in the first place. Few images exist from the production itself, sadly, and Russell did not provide a lot of insight into why he made these choices. In the only interview he gave about the production, he talks about how uniquely “modern” the text really is in comparison to other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas but does not elaborate on how his direction reflects this. Overall, the corgi skateboard itself remains a fun and baffling novelty, on and off the stage, a strange artifact from an even stranger theatrical production.
Sources
Fisher, Iain. “Ken Russell Stage: Opera and Princess Ida, Gilbert and Sullivan.” Savage Messiah: A Ken Russell Site by Iain Fisher, www.iainfisher.com/russell/ken-russell-opera-princess-ida.html. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
“Russell Royals. Princess Ida, London Coliseum.” The Herald, The Herald and Times Archive, 18 Nov. 1992, www.heraldscotland.com/news/12579363.Russell_royals___Princess_Ida__London_Coliseum_/.
Walters, Michael (Editor). “Gilbertian Gossip No. 41.” The Gilbert & Sullivan Newsletter Archive, 6 Sept. 1998, gsarchive.net/newsletters/gossip/no40/gg40_02.html.
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