No 5 -- June 1976 Edited by Michael Walters
GROSVENOR LIGHT OPERA COMPANY - The Pirates of Penzance, St Pancras Town Hall 7 May 1976.
I had not been to a production of this Society since 1972 (Ruddigore) when in sheer boredom I left after the end of Act 1. I decided it was time I paid a return visit. The performance was as bad, but no worse, than I had expected. The Orchestra was good in that I did not consciously hear any wrong notes in the Overture (an unusual event anywhere outside Imperial College). The costumes and sets (both hired) were very pretty. The cast had mostly competent voices but went through a humdrum series of old-fashioned, stock, meaningless theatrical gestures, making all the characters flat and cardboard - with the glorious exception of Kate (Pauline Wright), a horsey woman, who, among other things, marched across the stage with three heavy footsteps on the three chords just before "Her case may anyday" and lifted the pirate who was chasing her bodily off the ground. Ann Pooley sang Mabel's Waltz Song with delicacy and charm - I suspected that she might have been listening to Isabel Jay's record for her rendering had a similar lilt. Christopher Roberts sang the Major-General's song dead pan with excellent diction. Richard Rayment's Frederic was (if possible) duller and more vibrant than it had been for Geoids, and his sallow middle-aged looking face did not betray a "boyish heart". The programme note said "It is not easy to take The Pirates of Penzance seriously or to treat its vigorous humour with a sense of delicacy or restraint. Drama and pathos are hardly evident." Unfortunately this was only too true. I didn't stay for the second act. There was a slip enclosed in the programme which I reproduce as a mark of respect to an obvious G & S enthusiast, whom, regrettably, I never met: "It is with sadness that we note the death of one of our staunchest members John Kennedy, who died rather suddenly.... John was a great champion of the lesser known Savoy Operas and never failed to propose Utopia or Thespis for our next production. Although we are not performing either of these operas tonight we trust that his enthusiasm for all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas will live on in Grosvenor." MICHAEL WALTERS
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