ANOTHER LOOK AT "ENGAGED"

Over the past decade it has been possible to see both Gilbert's play, and the light opera made from it. I have never been happy with the opera, which to my mind sounds like exactly what it is, a play in which gaps have been torn in the dialogue and songs plonked in. The action stops for the song, and then resumes from where it left off. It leaves a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, and this in spite of the fact that I saw a good performance of it by Geoids AOS (1968). Recently thumbing through old copies of Opera given me by Roger Chesher I came upon two reviews of the opera, from which I quote extracts. The first is by Eric Walter White on the original Bristol Opera School Production 30 March 1962.

The result is a clever pastiche of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, constructed according to the formula with genuine Gilbert & Sullivan material. All it lacks is the sense of being the fruit of a living artistic partnership, in which case one feels Sullivan would have been more critical of Gilbert's basic dramatic ideas and asked for various modifications to suit his needs as a composer and the resulting score would have had an all-over unity of purpose and style that the present arrangement seems to lack. Nevertheless, Engaged is a completely viable operetta, and for those who hanker after a new work by Gilbert Sullivan, this is as close as they will ever get to it.

The second report is by Arthur Jacobs, describing the Guildhall School production of March 1964.

First performed in Bristol on 27th March 1962, it was brought to London by the Grosvenor Light Opera Company at King George's Hall on 25 February 1964, soon followed by this Guildhall School production. The adapters were at their cleverest in seeing that the comically repeated Wedding Chorus of The Grand Duke fit their adaptation with yet more comic repetitive effect. Here they were able to use both Gilbert's words and Sullivan's music. More often the lyrics are Mr. Rowell's own, The music is mainly drawn from Sullivan's unfamiliar operettas to texts by Gilbert and others; the overture Di Ballo is also raided, and Mr. Mobbs has written some music of his own and used one number from Alfred Cellier's The Mountebanks, with Gilbert's original words. Mr. Mobbs's musical carpentering is stylishly Sullivan-like and Mr. Rowell's lyrics are amusing and to the point (though such a rhyme as "marries" and "Paris" would never have passed Gilbert). [NB. Mr. Jacobs has failed to do his homework here. The rhyme to which he refers comes from a song taken from His Excellency; the words are by Gilbert. Tut, tut. Ed.] I wish I could proceed to hail the whole work as "a completely viable operetta", as Eric Walter White did in our June 1962 issue. But it seems to me that, even apart from the lameness of much of Sullivan's music in the little-known works, the pace of the new operetta is dubious. We wait too long for things to happen. And the inclusion of a whole mock-funeral chorus (for someone who turns out not to be dead), while funny in itself, is a too-procrastinating replacement for one man's silent entry in the original play, taking only a few seconds. My doubts and criticisms might have been partly charmed away by a really sparkling production. This was anything but. Used as we are the days to college performances of real accomplishment, it was a shock to find here a standard which suggested not young professionals, but amateurs. The singing was at most tolerable, the acting hardly that. … The cast was under-rehearsed and lacked individual dramatic guidance....

So there were are. Although receiving a handful of performances in the 60s, the piece seems to have been largely neglected in the 70s. Probably justly! Having seen the play at the National Theatre, I came to the conclusion that Gilbert's play managed rather better without the help of Sullivan (and Cellier), and the efforts (well meaning though they undoubtedly were) of Messrs Rowell & Mobbs. MICHAEL WALTERS

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