Duels, a female-only university, warring kingdoms and men disguised as women – it’s Gilbert and Sullivan at their most fun! Written in 1884 at the height of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s highly successful collaboration and based on a Tennyson poem called “The Princess”, the story has a fictionalised medieval European setting. Prince Hilarion (son of King Hildebrand) and Princess Ida (daughter of King Gama) were betrothed as babies and the time has come for the prince to claim his bride. But on meeting Ida's three brutish brothers and her thoroughly disagreeable father, Hilarion is dismayed (but not entirely surprised) to learn that Ida has renounced all men and dedicated her life to learning. She has turned a family castle into a fortified school for girls, where men are forbidden on pain of death to enter.

With his father the king threatening war over the broken promise, Prince Hilarion and his friends decide to disguise themselves as female students to win the Princess over – but they are reckoning without the intelligence and force of personality of the women found within the school walls. A literal battle of the sexes seems inevitable, but this is Gilbert and Sullivan; the only inevitable things are beautiful music and a lot of fun!