It was the first time I had visited this Society or the rather fine school theatre in which they play; and this in spite of the fact that I have known Tony Pitchforth for years and have often asked him to remind me about his productions. It was a respectable if rather gimmicky production. The set depicted a grass hut on a Pacific island, ostensibly the Royal Palace - which was tarted up for Act 2 - odd the idea of a South Pacific drawing room being held on the grass sward outside a grass hut, but Queen Salote may have done just that! It was impossible to determine whether the island was in Micronesia, Melanesia or Polynesia, so great was the variation in skin-colour of the natives, ranging from nearly pure black (Scaphio) to nearly pure white (Zara). The costumes, a mixture of grass skirts and sarongs, appeared to be Charles Fox's best set. I could not quite reconcile the two totempoles at the sides of the stage, the goatskin rug for the King's throne, or the buffalo-horn staff-of-office for Calynx - they looked as if they had wandered in from a production of Rose Marie! The orchestra were one of the best purely amateur orchestras I have heard (at least I assume they were purely amateur in the absence of anything to the contrary in the programme) and were conducted by John Morrell with care and vitality. One curious production point (of which I totally failed to see the purpose) was that the "Palace Peeper" was never mentioned by name (do I hear howls of anguish coming from New York?) and nobody gave it to anybody, it was always found lying around on stage - very careless of people, surely, to leave top-security literature just lying around! Christopher Worrall was a large, beefy, if slightly unsubtle King. Scaphio and Phantis (Peter Henson and Jon Coad) made up like witchdoctors, did try hard, but didn't really convince me. Andrew Taylor-James was much too gimmicky to make Tarara into an even remotely credible figure. Elizabeth Curry acted and sang beautifully as Zara. The "flowers" were an assorted group, with Bryan Kesselman suitably "common" as Blushington, Douglas Milson suitably doddery as Sir Baily Barre and Ken Robinson suitably aristocratic as Lord Dramaleigh. Tony Pitchforth (Goldbury) did about as well as a tenor can do with a bass part, in places he was evidently singing a higher line than that allocated in the score; and gave, for me, the most enjoyable performance of the evening - but then I'm biased. After a space of three weeks when I came to try to complete the notes I was astounded how much of the detail had faded from my mind - proof, alas, how little lasting impression the production made on me. MICHAEL WALTERS

• To Previous Page
• To Next Page
• To No. 11 Home Page
• To Gilbertian Gossip Home Page

Web page created 2 January 2001