No 43 -- 1995 Edited by Michael Walters
In Gasbag of February 1983, Marc Shepherd drew out his claws to sink them in Dorothy, the opera by B.C. Stephenson and Alfred Cellier. He printed a lengthy review of the piece by G.B. Shaw, prefixing it with an editorial attempting to prove how dreadful Dorothy is. But methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. To begin with, anyone reading the article quickly and without realising the background of the opera, might imagine that Shaw was reviewing the original production. In fact, his review was quite clearly of a very bad touring production which had at that time reached Greenwich on the outskirts of London. Furthermore, Shaw's temper was unlikely to have been improved by having to sit in the discomfort (?and smell) of the gallery (the gallery of an English theatre in the nineteenth century, was no place for a gentleman), besides which, Shaw appears to have had a dislikew of Cellier's music. The review must, therefore, be treated as highly biassed. Not all the information in Marc's editorial is correct. Dorothy opened at the Gaiety Theatre, where it was a dismal failure, in spite of having Marion Hood (who created Mabel in Pirates) in the lead. It was then transferred to the Gaiety [SIC] where Marion Hood was replaced by Marie Tempest, and Hayden Coffin took over the baritone role. Cellier was abroad at the time, and as Stephenson decided that Coffin needed an extra song, he dug out an old ballad of Cellier's and fitted it with new words. The result was "Queen of my heart". Thus the success of Dorothy was probably partly due to the fact that thje leads fitted the roles in question. It was, in fact, a fortuitous forerunner of the modern custom of writing a show round the talents of a particular star. Pickwick was a great success in London, but can one imagine it without Hartry Seacombe, or Half a Sixpence without Tommy Steele? Dorothy did not "fade into obscurity", it simply did what 80% of all musical productions do, it closed and was not revived. But it continued to be performed by amateur companies for a very long time. To say that it was "no match for the success of G&S" is unfair, for the same could be said of every other musical work ever written for the stage. No work, not even the finest and most popular of Mozart's operas has achieved the continued and lasting success (in terms of the total number of performances ever given) as G&S. They are a unique phenomenon. To suggest that something is somehow lacking because it does not measure up to this, is absurd. Dorothy was a piece of its time, and is now out of date, just as are the tiresome dreary "comedies" of Ben Jonson (I speak from bitter experience, having acted in two of them). But to suggest that Jonson was a failure because his plays have not the lasting quality of Shakespeare would be wrong. To redress the balance, I quote some extracts from a contemporary booklet called "Dorothy Sketches". MICHAEL WALTERS
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