No 5 -- June 1976 Edited by Michael Walters
VALE GILBERT & SULLIVAN SOCIETY, The Yeomen of the Guard, 5 May 1976 Victoria Hall, Tring.
This Society performs a G & S opera annually, and a few years ago made history by singing G & S for 24 hours without a break. The President of the Society, Thomas Round, attended the same performance as I did, but I did not hear what he thought of it.
OVERTURE tempi acceptable, woodwind frequently out of key or off the note, some glaring wrong notes. Nevertheless the louder parts of the score produced a good beefy sound. Brass good. Phoebe's Song - played before half-tabs. -pleasantly sung. Her dialogue with Shadbolt was V.G. Phoebe (Rosemary Southworth) and Shadbolt (Brian Rose) gave the best histrionic performances of the evening. Shadbolt was a really accomplished actor though he was no great shakes as a singer, and didn't seem to know the score very well. Yeomen's first Chorus thin & raucous as usual and painfully slow. 2Y- dull. Dame Carruthers (Hilda Pratt) Good voice. Song well sung but unexciting. Leonard (Malcolm Rose, ?son of Brian) Good. A powerful and good voice - though a bit undisciplined. He had a raucous moment at the end of the trio. A trifle young, but with more experience should make a good performer. Fairfax (John Rotheroe) Is Life a Boon: not very good, basically OK voice but went off key. Age difference between Fairfax and Leonard too great to be convincing. Make-up could have helped. SGT. MERYLL (Michael Foley) Weak. POINT (Stewart Collins) was acting a "fool" rather than a "jester" - amateurishly overacted. He did not appear to understand the character. However, he sang well, and played with obvious enthusiasm and enjoyment. His moves were too casual, fidgety and floppy - he needed more tightness and discipline. LIEUT (Paul Bridle) Elderly. He couldn't keep in time with the orchestra in the trio, and had the "traditional" crack on the D - "most bridegrooms ere they marry..." The trio was sluggish and never got off the ground. It was very laboured. Lieut's dialogue was lethargic. I've jibe & joke was a disaster. The Orchestra didn't know it, and wern't with the singer. He sang it without any feeling or subtlety. The dialogue with Lieut fore and aft of the song was simply boring. T'is done - good, but a bit laboured. Elsie (Patricia Rose) has a good voice but phrased badly and sang a bit pedantically. YEOMEN SOLI IN ACT 1 FINALE: 1Y had a wobble. 2Y - quite good, it was a different 2Y from the one who sang "This the autumn of our life". Later in the finale 2Y became the original one again - very complicated, especially as none of them were credited in the programme. (The Headsman, on the other hand was:- he was Clive Godden, the local butcher). The set was excellent, using only two flats, and the rest was on a superbly painted backcloth which gave depth and perspective. (Nigel Stevens ought to have seen it.) By Act 2 POINT'S unvarying goony style had begun to irritate me. Conductor was late on cue for "Free from his fetters Grim" - unpardonable! FAIRFAX ("Free from") had trouble reaching the top notes - and his phrasing was horrible - pauses in all the wrong places. Off key. MADRIGAL good, Kate (Kate Collins) has a lovely voice. Orchestra nearly mucked it up. DAME C was on too late to overhear the plot properly, and her line "3 heads as well as his. . . " made no sense therefore. Both Acts lacked pace and dragged. Tempi too sluggish. It was quite an enjoyable evening! MICHAEL WALTERS
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