'...this is BROADWAY Pirates and is hilarious. I've seen every scene a thousand times during rehearsals and still laugh out loud every time!!'
Sasha Regan’s critically acclaimed all-male IOLANTHE will open at Wilton’s Music Hall on Friday 1 April, following previews from 30 March, for a limited season, ending 7 May. Originally staged at the Union Theatre towards the end of last year, this is the second Union Theatre production to transfer to Wilton’s, following the success of Pirates of Penzance last year, which won the Best Off-West End Production in the Whatsonstage Awards 2010.The amazing Wilton's Theatre (above) looks worth a visit just for itself!
Sasha Regan’s production, with design by Stewart Charlesworth, has been set in a public boys’ school. Choreography is by Mark Smith, director and choreographer of new dance company, Deaf Men Dancing, with musical supervision by Michael England and musical direction by Chris Mundy.
Sounds long overdue!Dr Susan Skedd, English Heritage's Blue Plaques Historian said: "Carte was unrivalled in his day as a theatrical manager and will be the first opera impresario to be honoured with a blue plaque."
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'.
Grade uses first speech in House of Lords to support Live Music BillJoan Bakewell also spoke in favour of the Bill:
Matthew Hemley, 4 March, The Stage
'New Conservative peer and former ITV chairman Michael Grade has used his maiden speech in the House of Lords to back Tim Clement-Jones’ Live Music Bill, claiming the 2003 Licensing Act which it seeks to amend is a “bad law” that denies up and coming music talent the chance to develop their skills.....'
“Anything that can move the enjoyment of music to a live event with a space between the music and the audience seems to me valuable.”Read the full article at The Stage here.
'G&S isn't a deadweight of smugness – a totemic survival of the myth of Victorian respectability – but a living tradition that remains at the heart and root of just about every musical now playing in the West End or on Broadway. It is built on Gilbert's genius for light rhymed verse and Sullivan's genius for melody, which combine in a fusion of text and music that has rarely been equalled, let alone surpassed.'And so say all of us! Read his full article online at The Telegraph.
A Slave of Duty?
Why do we spend all these days in a hall
For month upon month acting scenes to a wall
Learning each move, each word and each air
When we could be outside, on the Downs without care
Why do we think that the drama and speeches
That hark back a century ever could reach us
Or that sparkling melodies, clever and gay
Could even compete with the beat of today
Why do we believe that satire and parody
Cuttingly chosen to light social malady
Taking the rise out of pirate and peer
Could resonate now in a chord we can hear
Could it be faith that keeps us all true
Giving a well loved tradition its due
Could it be stardom that glints in our eye
And this just a way to reach up for the sky
Could it be habit, a hobby of old
Or a way for the shy to step up and be bold
A unfilled ambition, a tick on a list
Each opera so special it’s not to be missed
But I take the plunge for the joy of the new
For the strength of the team and thrill of a cue
To learn and to laugh, to fear and to strive
And to sing every note just to feel more alive
- Richard Dean
'It’s all completely bonkers, organised without significant public funding or media interest, and a marvellous tribute to the unquenchable resilience of this uniquely British phenomenon and the opportunity it offers for everyone to dress up, act the fool and sing their hearts out.'And we can't wait to do just that!
