The Pirates of Penzance was the only Gilbert and Sullivan opera written specifically for performance in the US - a fact not lost on English National Opera. The group has, perhaps recklessly, decided to indulge in a co-production of the piece with the Chicago Lyric Opera, where this staging by Elijah Moshinsky opened earlier this year. It purports to be "a witty reinvention of Victorian theatre", though apart from a couple of deft touches, - a front curtain embroidered with the initials VR, the appearance of the queen herself - much of it has a 1980s, new-romantic feel.

The pirates are a glorious-looking post-punk crew, all tattoos, mohicans, piercings and Vivienne Westwood-style clothes. Karl Daymond's Pirate King is Adam Ant without the war paint. You expect the whole thing to mutate at any moment into the video for Prince Charming. And would that it did, for one thing you soon notice is an air of tentative caution where there should be panache. Taken purely as an exercise in camp, the production simply hasn't got the necessary swagger.

Moshinsky has tried to avoid both D'Oyly Carte traditionalism and the temptation to emulate the Broadway musical. He has some nice ideas, albeit inconsistently deployed. General Stanley's daughters, who have spent the first act in their underwear, are discovered after the interval more appropriately immured in an oppressive greenhouse, like hothouse flowers.

But Moshinsky loses sight of much of Gilbert's satire. There is little to suggest the main thrust of the work, which is still relevant: it questions the moral worth of a hereditary aristocracy and inveighs against both a military establishment that lets others do the fighting and a police force that hinders rather than helps the law.