Don't forget to order your Sketch Show T

If you are coming to Buxton for our Festival Fringe Gilbert and Sullivan Sketch Show performance and have asked for a T shirt, don't forget to confirm your order with Paul K by next Tuesday! Paul needs your size (they go by chest measurement) and also whether you prefer a T or a polo shirt. The polos come in larger sizes than the Ts and Paul has full details.

They are black with our 40th Anniversary logo on the front and the details of our show on the back in yellow/gold. Hopefully people will see it and just have to come : -).

Interview with WS Gilbert

The Autumn 2010 edition of InTouch Magazine (the alumni magazine of Kings College London) has reprinted a fascinating interview with WS Gilbert, given ten years before he died. In it he talks about his early life, the Mikado and his first meeting with Sullivan. The magazine is available online - just open the link below and click your way to page 22 to read it!

At Home with WS Gilbert

With thanks to Richard D for sourcing this!

© In Touch/Kings College London

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Gilbert v Sullivan

There is a very interesting article by Tom Ford about Gilbert and Sullivan's partnership, and Gilbert's life without Sullivan, on the Australian website LimelightMagazine.com:

'G&S: the Lennon/McCartney of the 19th century

On the centenary of WS Gilbert’s death, Tom Ford sheds light on the life without Sullivan.

They were a musical and lyric juggernaut brought to its knees by a series of artistic and personal misunderstandings. This disharmony – like John Lenon and Paul McCartney's – was left unresolved following a premature and unforeseen death. The mighty partnership between wordsmith William Schwenck Gilbert and musical prodigy Arthur Seymour Sullivan, which produced 14 comic operas between 1871 and 1896, was prickly and delicate. These two men fused their creative powers, yet remained deliberately independent from each other. “Each man brought his own star to the partnership,” noted scholar Gayden Wren. “That it lasted so long is little short of miraculous.” So what was it that sparked their eventual estrangement?....'

Read the whole article at Limelight Magazine.

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NHGS Gilbert and Sullivan concert

North Herts Guild of Singers are presenting The Topsy Turvy World of Gilbert and Sullivan on Saturday 18th June 2011 at the Gordon Craig Theatre, Stevenage. Visit the NHGS Society Website here for more details.

'To mark the centenary of WS Gilbert’s death the North Herts Guild of Singers, with invited soloists, present a romp through the witty satire of Gilbert and the incomparable melodies of Arthur Sullivan. Gilbert poked fun at all that was self-important in Victorian England. The mighty, the rich, the lawyers, the Lords - all were cleverly mocked. Even melodrama, magic, feminism and the aesthetic movement were not spared his sharp wit. Their topsy-turvy tales have left us with a rich legacy of operettas that are still regularly performed and loved throughout the world.'

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Show taster results

The Show Taster results are in, after an entertaining evening sampling a variety of shows and some really fun presentations. This is a provisional list as the Autumn shows depend on the availability of performing licenses, but here is the master plan so far, based on popularity:

Spring 2012 (April) - Patience
Autumn 2012 (October) - Jack the Ripper (The Musical)
Spring 2013 (April) - The Zoo, Cox and Box, Trial by Jury
Autumn 2013 (October) - Salad Days

It looks like we have a very exciting two years ahead, both for audiences and the Society!

Here are some links with more information about the shows:

Salad Days:   Guide to Musical Theatre
Patience:   The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
The Zoo:   The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
Cox and Box: The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
Trial by Jury: The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive

 The cover of the original cast recording
© Oriole Records

Show taster evening

Tuesday, 17th May 2011 from 7.45pm
Streatley Village Hall.

A selection of shows will be presented with Audio, DVD clips and live performances so that members can choose the next shows for the Society in 2012 and possibly even 2013.

This will be a fun evening where you can have your say and vote for what you want to perform - from Modern Musicals, G&S, Operettas, Music Hall and more.

Free nibbles & wine

If you are a member and can't attend the evening you can still vote using the slip which can be printed from the link below. Votes need to reach Paula by 17 May.

Downloadable Voting Form PDF.

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Our Next PBGS Show

Congratulations to everyone for a successful production of Ruddigore, and to our audiences for supporting us and almost filling the entire Theatre. By all the laughter, I think everybody had a very good time!

But we are not resting on our laurels - we will soon be starting rehearsals for our next production - The Gilbert and Sullivan Sketch Show. Written by member, Paula Fraser, this show is a fast-paced and irreverent romp through the main themes of all the Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas. We will be performing the Sketch Show at Henlow Theatre on the 16th July 2011, at the Buxton International G&S Festival Fringe on the 31st July 2011, and presenting it as our Autumn Show as we return to the Queen Mother Theatre with it from the 6th - 8th October 2011.

We hope to see you all there for more G&S mayhem!

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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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Review: Iolanthe at Wilton's Music Hall

Sasha Regan's all-male Iolanthe is now running at Wilton's Music Hall and has gained a good review from Michael Coveney of The Independant:

'...director Sasha Regan and her boys are doing something just as gloriously fresh and inventive as Matthew Bourne did with Swan Lake, or Richard Jones with Annie Get Your Gun at the Young Vic.

And it's not necessarily radical, in a "conceptual" or vindictive manner. Above all, it's not camp or knowing. Sentiment is pure and humour affectionate, which takes some doing with the slightly arch nature of the story, in which a stage full of fairies and peers squabble over the Victorian romance between a chap, Strephon, who is only a fairy "down to the waist" and a shepherdess who is a ward of Chancery. An all-male chorus of fairies are genuinely charming and funny in their improvised costumes of corsets, vests, cami-knickers and wings of bunting and silk strips.'

Iolanthe runs until the 7 May and you will find more about it here.

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Aesthetic Movement Exhibition at the V&A

 © National Portrait Gallery

Patience.... what's that all about? Well, if you have always been wondering, wonder no more because the V&A has a wonderful new exhibition The Cult of Beauty: Beautiful Dreamers running from now until the 17th of July.

The Independant has an interesting article about the Aesthetic Movement and the Exhibition on their website here.

'....as captivating as this cult of personality proved to be, their peacock feathers and long-haired loftiness also left them open to ridicule, together with stories of decadence and complicated amours. As the years went by, they were attacked for being a narcissistic, pavonine and self-regarding group that was prone to excessive foppery.

Satirical ribaldry against them emerged in the form of cartoons in Punch and in Gilbert and Sullivan's opera Patience. Calloway says this cloud of disparaging humour did "slightly puncture the grandeur of the movement". A young Oscar Wilde, still a student at Oxford at the time, came on board the movement to counteract the negative publicity after being asked by the theatre impresario, D'Oyly Carte, who was promoting Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, to undertake a series of lectures in America so the nation would understand the opera's many contemptuous references to the movement. Wilde spent a year lecturing, giving 300 talks and travelling a thousand miles to spread the word. His efforts paid off: aestheticism became well understood in America.'

You will find full details about this fascinating exhibition on the V&A Website.

The Cult of Beauty: the Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, V&A, London SW7 (020 7942 2000) 2 April to 17 July.
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Showing this Week: Pirates and Annie

Wolverton G&S's producton of The Pirates of Penzance, 29th March - 2nd April 2011. From Jo Bigg:

'...this is BROADWAY Pirates and is hilarious. I've seen every scene a thousand times during rehearsals and still laugh out loud every time!!'

And Pirton Players production of Annie, which will run from the 30th March - 2nd April.

Good luck to everyone involved, especially the PBGSers!

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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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Iolanthe with a difference and Blue Plaque for D'Oyly Carte

Wilton's Theatre

From a press release, with thanks to Deborah and Richard Dean:

All-Male Iolanthe To Open At Wilton’s Music Hall For A Limited Season

Opening 1 April to 7 May 2011:

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.

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.

The amazing Wilton's Theatre (above) looks worth a visit just for itself!

Performances Tuesday-Saturday 7.30pm, Saturday & Sunday 2.30pm
Tickets £23 (£15 previews; £18 concessions; £60 family ticket)
Place Wilton’s Music Hall, Graces Alley, off Ensign Street, London E1 8JB
Box Office 020 7702 2789

Full details on the West End Theatre Website and Wilton's Theatre.

And here is a review of Sasha Regan's 2010 award-winning Pirates of Penzance.

D'Oyly Carte awarded a Blue Plaque

Also with thanks to Richard Dean:

In case you missed December's news, D'Oyly Carte was finally awarded a Blue Plaque on 14th December. It was unveiled by director Mike Leigh at his home on Dartmouth Road, Kentish Town, where he lived from 1860-1870:

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."

Sounds long overdue!

Full details on The Telegraph Website.

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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

Live Music Bill

Something of importance to everyone who supports Live Music. From The Stage:

Grade uses first speech in House of Lords to support Live Music 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.....'

Joan Bakewell also spoke in favour of the Bill:

“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.

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No never....

As Jonathan Miller's Black and White Mikado is enjoying an anniversary revival at the ENO, here is a link to an interesting article that - although it came out in The Telegraph last August - is still well worth the read. Miller, despite his huge success with his production, had desribed G&S as "the most boringly self-satisfied form of English drivel", prompting a strong defence from Rupert Christiansen in his article 'Never (no never) mock the genius of Gilbert & Sullivan':

'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.
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A Slave of Duty?

Richard Dean has written a wonderful poem that sums up why all of us doggedly turn up at Streatley week after week, clutching our scores and librettos:

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