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Bodine Hall
November 9, 2013
"The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?"
Stephen Sondheim would appear, as the British would put it, to have scored an "own goal" here ("shot himself in the foot", if you prefer), for as Jack Marshall points out, in a blog entry nicely skewering Sondheim's published criticisms of G&S, "last year [2010], there were more productions of H.M.S. Pinafore than West Side Story, more productions of The Mikado than Pacific Overtures, more productions of The Pirates of Penzance than Sweeney Todd, and more productions of The Gondoliers than Sunday in the Park With George".
And surely there can be few groups of people who feel more strongly about G&S than the Victoria Gilbert and Sullivan Society.
Over the last few years, the VGS (if one may so denote them) have mounted two kinds of production: fully staged, with a chamber-sized orchestra, and concert, with a full sized orchestra but no costumes or scenery.
Having attended both kinds, I'd be hard put to say which I prefer - the phrase "swings and roundabouts" tends to leap irresistibly to mind.
Pirates - or to give it its full name The Pirates of Penzance or The Slave of Duty - was a concert performance, and consequently had to be given in halls large enough to take both singers and players.
Sidney's Bodine Hall, which I had not visited before, obviously presented one or two challenges - the singers were discreetly amplified, for example, or they'd hardly have been heard above the band.
Most noticeable, though, on this chilly November day, was the ventilation system which contributed a low-level susurration throughout; moreover, it prevented the hall's ever warming up sufficiently for the general removal of coats, etc.
It is therefore a testimony to the performance itself that nobody left the hall and everybody - both audience and performers - clearly enjoyed themselves greatly.
Tom Mitchell, sharing stick waving duties with George Corwin, was on the podium (I speak metaphorically) for this performance and began it with a sprightly, well-tuned and cohesive account of the overture which, as all good overtures should, left us eager to hear what followed.
As one has come to expect, the singing of the chorus was excellent - the wonderful "Hail poetry", for example, had all the splendour and majesty Sullivan could have desired - and all of the principals were, at the very least, good.
Merissa Cox's Ruth was possibly rather more attractive a character than Gilbert intended: he seemed to have something of a prejudice against middle-aged unmarried women - in which he was probably a man of his time - and tends to poke fun at them and deny them (at least until Mikado) anything approaching a happy ending.
I do wonder about Ruth, though. According to the plot (perhaps a rather grandiose word for the wonderful illogic which came from Gilbert's pen) Ruth, being hard of hearing, apprenticed young Frederic not to the intended "pilot" but to a "pirate". (Of course she could simply have been thinking that being a pilot wasn't much of a job before the invention of heavier-than-air-flight, but I digress).
How to explain, then, that years later there is absolutely no sign of hearing loss on Ruth's part? Could this honest mistake have been something more sinister?
As Frederic, the handsome young twerp (some of Gilbert's heroes are also dashing; all are handsome, young - and twerps) Adam Dyjach made his dutiful agreement to serve another few decades as a pirate sound almost a sensible course of action., which was no mean feat.
Mabel, his soon-to-be-enamorata, was beautifully judged by Inge Illman. I particularly enjoyed the way she suddenly came to light on seeing Frederic, preening and smiling roguishly before she had sung a single note, or even been introduced, the brazen young hussy. And I am more than prepared to believe that the slight edge evident in her voice at the top of its range, was due to the amplification: firstly, because it was never evident on the previous occasions I have heard her sing and secondly because it was also present with the other soloists on this occasion. (Don't misunderstand: given the auditorium and its layout, amplification was inevitable and was, for the most part, not at all obtrusive.)
One of the great treats, for me, any VGS production is Adrian Sly's portrayal of the "heavy" and, although the Pirate King, being, like his comrades, a disaffected peer, is not particular bad, Sly nonetheless played (and sung) him with relish aforethought.
Jonathan Woodward's distinctly superior Major-General Stanley has, of course, one of the best known (although certainly not the best) of the "patter songs" and, if not every word of "I am the very model of a modern major-general" was clearly audible over the full orchestra, well some of Gilbert's rhymes are marginal, at best.
That other favourite, "A policeman's lot is not a happy one" enabled Rudy Ewart as the Sergeant of Police to display a nice line in lugubriousness, ably supported by his platoon.
Throughout the afternoon the Civic Orchestra under Tom Mitchell accompanied unobtrusively and with aplomb. True there were a couple of passages of dubious intonation and occasionally scrappy ensemble, but, set beside the pleasures of actually hearing a full orchestra play the music, these were mere bagatelles.
All-in-all it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.
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