No 7 — July 1977 Edited by Michael Walters
It was Mecca that night. I went with Selwyn Tillett, and found there Richard Duployen, Timothy Spiers, Pat Cohen, Norman Bates, Christopher Boyd, Ian Gledhill, John & Lindsay Foster and Terence Rees, to name but a few. The production seemed surprisingly unimaginative for a Peggy Tierney production but, no doubt, being used to painting on bigger canvasses, she was hampered by the postage stamp stage. The orchestra was fairly competent in the usual amateur way - but there was a plethora of wrong notes. There were not many voices in the cast who were really up to singing the music, which is complicated and difficult, and many of the very fast patter songs sounded laboured. The role of Hassan, tailor-made for Walter Passmore, is a gift to any performer who is a good acting-comedian, and Victor Golding made the most of it, romping through with a superb "joie-de-vive" (even when about to lose his head), though he did sometimes have a tendency to overact. As the Sultana, Rose-in-Bloom, Joy Johnson was a little on the middle-aged side (there was really very little to choose, visually, between her and Dancing Sunbeam, making the substitution of one for the other seem a little pointless). She had, however, a lovely voice, and sang with style - if only I could have heard her do the part 20 years ago. Geoff Hewlett gave an authoritative performance as the Sultan. If he could curb a strong tendency to overact he could be a very fine performer. There were some very nice touches and subtleties in his performance, which Selwyn Tillett said was probably being played as a take-off of the Mikado - and on reflection I was inclined to think he was right. It is also interesting to speculate that this may be how the role was originally conceived, especially when one considers that Henry Lytton was playing the Mikado round about the same tine as he created the Sultan. Yussuf was about an unpoetic and unromantic as it was possible for a romantic poet to be. His voice was sound, but with a high-baritonal rather than a tenor quality. I gather though, that the society had the devil's job to find a tenor to do it at all - and under the circumstances (he joined the cast very late) it was probably quite an achievement. Michael Stevens was disappointing as Abdallah the Priest, a role in which he was basically miscast. The part really requires a heavier voice - Michael is a light comedian, and when deprived of the opportunity to be funny he just became dull. The sets and the costumes were pretty and colourful. The Rose of Persia is one of my favourite operas, and I had waited a long time to see it. This production was a very brave try at a very difficult work, which has been neglected far too long, and deserves a professional production. MICHAEL WALTERS
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