Not long now until ‘Patience’ hits the stage! Originally taking aim at the poets of the 1880s aesthetic movement, we’ve updated our production to the groovy hippie movement of the 1960s. Full of Gilbert’s sharp wit about fandom and Sullivan’s wonderful music it’s hilarious and definitely not one to miss! Book early for the best seats here or by clicking on our booking link wherever you see it.
In the groovy 1960s, a band of melancholic ladies idolise the aesthetic poet Bunthorne, though he secretly longs for the unaffected barmaid Patience. She has never been in love and is glad to have avoided the misery it brings. The maidens’ former suitors, the 35th Dragoon Guards, arrive to propose but are scorned in favour of Bunthorne’s languid artistic posturing.
Bunthorne later admits his aestheticism is a fraud. Patience is persuaded that true love must be unselfish and resolves to fall in love. She meets Archibald Grosvenor, her childhood love, now a perfectly handsome and universally admired poet. Concluding that loving someone so perfect would be selfish, they part.
Rejected by Patience, Bunthorne raffles himself among his admirers, but Patience offers to love him selflessly instead. The women return to the Dragoons—until Grosvenor appears and effortlessly wins their devotion.
The officers try to win back their fiancées by adopting aesthetic manners and “artistic” tastes, with mixed success. Bunthorne, jealous, bullies Grosvenor into becoming completely ordinary. When Grosvenor does so, the women abandon aestheticism as quickly as they embraced it. How will the complicated love matches play out? Come and see the show to find out!
