Ruddigore in Peterborough

Peterborough Gilbert and Sullivan players are presenting Ruddigore this week at the Key Theatre, Peterborough, with several faces familiar to us at PBGS. From the Vivacity Website (where you can also book your tickets online!):

There are some very strange happenings in the pretty Cornish fishing village of Rederring! A bad baronet (well 2 actually) carrying out horrendous crimes every day. A mad girl crazed out of her mind by unrequited love. A corps of bridesmaids desperate to officiate at a wedding – anyone’s wedding. And up in Ruddigore Castle more ghosts than you would ever want to meet. Throw in a witches curse, a sailor from a ferry who thinks he’s in Nelson’s navy, the most frustratingly timid young lovers since Hugo Horton and Alice Springs, a manservant they’d never employ in Downton Abbey, the dastardly kidnapping of a defenceless old woman and you have it.

Peterborough G&S Players next production is sure to be a hit!

Ruddigore is on from 14th - 17th September. Theatre Map here.
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PBGS Ruddigore showing this week

© Sue Wookey

PBGS's production of Ruddigore opens at the Queen Mother Theatre, Hitchin, tomorrow night and audiences will be treated to an evening of high melodrama, comedy and fantastic singing. But ‘be warned in time’ (to quote Dame Hannah) that Thursday tickets are nearly sold out so if you want to come on that night, book now!

Come along this week and find out if pretty Rose Maybud will choose to marry ‘Dick’ the Sailor, who thinks she’s a ‘tight little craft’, or Sir Despard Murgatroyd, the current Bad Baronet of Ruddigore, or will she pick shy and retiring Robin Oakapple who harbours a dark and dreadful secret?

Ruddigore

4th - 7th May

The Queen Mother Theatre

Walsworth Road

Hitchin SG4 9SP

Theatre Box Office: 01462 455166 between 12.30 and 1.30pm Mondays to Saturdays and 8pm to 9.30pm Mondays to Thursdays

Or from the Society: 07946 264886

Tickets £12, *Concessions Wed and Thur £10

*concessions: senior citizens, children, ES40JPs, students

Ruddigore: a matter of life and death and bad taste

 Roderick's entrance through the trap door

After Ruddigore's mixed First Night reviews, Gilbert made several changes to his production. While the original title, Ruddygore, created a furore amongst those who thought that it unsuitable for the ears of Ladies, there was another aspect of the first night which raised accusations of bad taste. A anonymous letter, signed 'A Savoyard' was sent to the editor of the St James Gazette complaining that "The love-scene between Hannah and the ghost of a man who has been ten years dead produced an uncomfortable impression.... it is a grisly idea; it is not funny; and it is in doubtful taste...". Ah, the sensibilities of the Victorians. Imagine if he'd seen The Rocky Horror Show.

The comment, along with accusations that Act 2 lacked pace, resulted in several changes - Sir Roderick no longer returned at the end by popping up through a trap door and surrounded by red flames, removing that demonic air which made his entrance to startling. The ghostly ancestors didn't return at all, but reappeared as the gentry of the first act (begging the question, what on earth were they doing there?) and a substantial amount of Hannah and Roderick's dialogue was cut altogether, losing, alas, Hannah's wonderfully tasteless line "But I should be the wife of a dead husband, Roddy!" It was generally agreed that the swifter conclusion picked up the pace of Act 2. But I would have loved to have see the original 'grisly' version.

- SW
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Know your Ruddigore dance moves?

Ruddigore contains a LOT of dancing and Paula has choreographed some wonderful moves for us. Do you know your 'meeting and greeting' from your 'ins and outs'? Are you creating arches when everyone else is going in circles? Help is at hand. Check out the Notices Page for downloadable PDFs of the moves and never bump into anybody again. On the first night of Ruddigore at the Savoy, the end of the Act 1 Finale was so well received that it was actually encored, so I assume they had to perform their dance twice!

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PBGS Ruddigore, 4-7th May 2011

An original Savoy Theatre publicity card

We are now in the last stages of putting our production of Ruddigore together and things are really starting to shape up. This is going to be a very funny production with an excellent cast, and a chorus excelling themselves at mastering the choreography of the long dances which Sullivan wrote into the score. Margaret is Mad, Despard is Bad and our Chairman will be getting Very Dangerous to Know if we don't start selling more tickets. This is going to be a terrific evening of comic melodrama (Gilbert gives us carte blanche for some serious over-acting!) and some of Sullivan's best music, so start filling out those booking forms. Tickets are available through members - who can obtain them during rehearsals from Ketina - or they can be booked direct from:

The Queen Mother Theatre

Walsworth Road

Hitchin SG4 9SP

Theatre Box Office: 01462 455166 between 12.30 and 1.30pm Mondays to Saturdays and 8pm to 9.30pm Mondays to Thursdays

Or from the Society: 07946 264886

Tickets £12, *Concessions Wed and Thur £10

*concessions: senior citizens, children, ES40JPs, students

The Queen Mother Theatre Website

BOOKING FORM downloadable PDF File

POSTER downloadable PDF File

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Rudigore: a rose by any other name

When Ruddigore opened at the Savoy on January 23th, 1887, it wasn’t in fact ‘Ruddigore’ at all, but ‘Ruddygore’ – the preferred title carefully chosen by both Gilbert and Sullivan together. G&S had a superstition about their operetta titles and never fixed them until just before the opening. Gilbert said in the Pall Mall Budget on January 27th ‘It is not easy to get a good title; I dare say I had half a dozen for this, printing them in block letters to see the effect on the eye. We finally fixed on ‘Ruddygore’.

But – it proved to be the most enormous blunder, creating outrage amongst the Savoy audience and critics alike. While Gilbert simply meant ruddy gore, as in red blood, ‘ruddy’ caused huge offence, being a word that would ‘scarcely sound pretty on ladies lips’ (the Graphic). When Gilbert was leaving his club he bumped into a man who asked ‘How is Bloodygore going?’ ‘It isn’t Bloodygore, it’s Ruddygore,’ replied Gilbert. ‘Oh, it’s the same thing’ said the man. ‘Is it?’ replied Gilbert, never at a loss for a pithy reply, ‘Then I suppose you’ll take it that if I say “I admire your ruddy countenance,” I mean “I like your bloody cheek!” The title ‘Ruddygore’ with its offensive ‘Y’ struggled on for 9 days until Gilbert finally conceded defeat and changed it to the now more familiar ‘Ruddigore’. Perhaps there should be a campaign to bring back the old ruddy title!

- SW

References

The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan Centennial Edition, Chappell, 1958
Gilbert and Sullivan and their World by Leslie Bailey, Thames and Hudson 1973
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Ruddigore: Spectres all appalling

 The ghost scene from the original production

Our next PBGS Show is Ruddigore, and the biggest challenge for any amateur or professional production is how to pull off the scene where the spectres of all the cursed Murgatroyds step out of their picture frames. So how did it all go in Gilbert's original production? Not as well as you might expect, at least on the troubled first night where the scene got mixed reviews. The reviewer at The Times didn't enjoy it at all, saying:

The ghost scene of the second act, representing the descent of the Murgatroyd ancestry from their picture frames, of which preliminary notices and hints of the initiated had let one to expect much, was a very tame affair. In the first instance, the stage management was not here equal to Savoy level. A set of very ugly daubs... pulled up as you might a patent iron shutter to reveal a figure in the recess behind, can scarcely be called a good example of modern stage contrivance, especially when, on Saturday night, one of these blinds or shutters comes down at an odd moment, while another refuses to move in time...

Shades of the wonderful Pod scene in This is Spinal Tap, but without the tight trousers. The reviewer of the Daily News was blown away by the wonderful Ghost music - unlike the Times, who, lacking the benefit of a crystal ball, pompously thought that the seriousness of the music was evidently 'too much for the composer'. The Daily News also loved Sullivan's ingenious solution to the problem of the darkened stage and auditorium:

The stage is darkened, and Sir Arthur Sullivan conducts with a baton tipped with a tiny incandescent lamp. The expedient is new to London, and it was, we believe, first used after the recent manoeuvres of the German army, when a military band of 1,200 performers serenaded the Kaiser in the dark. The whole of the music of the picture scene is far removed above the ordinary level of comic opera, and is among the best things of this sort that Sir Arthur Sullivan has ever written.

Rutland Barrington, who played Sir Despard, called it 'a very stormy first night,' and the show suffered from being in the shadow of Gilbert and Sullivan's last operetta, the hugely successful Mikado, but Ruddigore managed to run for 288 performances, leading Sullivan to quip to Barrington 'I could do with a few more such failures'. The Ghost Scene is now one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most famous and best loved scenes, forever cocking a snook at the Times reviewer's crusty opinion that it was 'pitched in the wrong key'.

- SW