The Scarborough theatre companies keeping Gilbert and Sullivan's shows alive - much to modern audience's delight
Consider the choice – Strictly Come Dancing or William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s Patience? I’d rather be marooned on a desert island with only Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment for company than watch either.
The decider, I had a mate in Patience and think Strictly is a group of narcissistic – Chris McCausland excepted – egoists prancing around to insufferable music – a bit like Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience then, one could argue.
The difference – the company presenting Patience made it fun and included you in it.
Stuffy, snobby, impenetrable and boring – I take back everything I have ever said about – to their mates – G&S. I can only conclude the productions I saw more than 40 years ago and have put me off since, were too-reverent renditions of the duo’s comedy opera canon.
Patience or Bunthorne’s Bride was presented by Tim Tubbs’ UK Foundation for Dance and Bill Scott and the Sandside Players at the YMCA Theatre in Scarborough.
The fifth of G&S’ comedy operas, Patience is about the rivalry between two aesthetes – poets Reginald Bunthorne and Archibald Grosvenor – and their battle for women’s devotion.
Add into the mix a group of lovesick soldiers vying for said women’s affections and you have the ingredients of a farce.
Patience of the title is a barmaid, who spurns all men and all men adore.
Apart from updating the setting to a book festival in a seaside town and upgrading Patience from a milkmaid to a barmaid – the story and its themes remain true to G&S – the Victorian’s answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice or Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil.
The cast revelled in performing the piece and their understanding of and delight in G&S came over the footlights loud and clear.
Tim Tubbs and Andrew Clay played Bunthorne and Grosvenor, respectively. They were wonderful as the self-obsessed, self-absorbed poets of questionable quality.
Rebecca Kelly-Evans gave a Brummie earthiness to her lovely, lovesick patience and Dave Blaker – who also tinkered, ie updated a few lyrics – gave a command performance as Colonel Calverley.
Threatening to steal the show was Alex Weatherhill – well versed in cross-gender G&S roles – as Lady Jane, organiser of the book festival.
His solo Silver’d is the Raven Hair and duet with Tubbs’ Bunthorne So Go to Him and Say to Him brought the house down – as did Tubbs and Clay’s song and dance routine When I Go Out the Door.
Add in The Soldiers of the King, If Saphir I Chose to Mary and Let the Merry Cymbals Sound and I will never say again that there are no tunes in G&S.
The patter songs – even I know some of them – were also entertaining.
The ridiculousness and references of the Aesthetic movement – art exists for the sake of its beauty alone and of which Oscar Wilde was a leading light – may be lost on a 21st-century audience.
Narcissism and egoism – think that of influencers, Strictly Come Dancing competitors and Love Island hopefuls – are timeless topics for ridicule.
Patience is a delightful, funny, melodic, tune-filled comedy – and I cannot wait to see what the company – thankfully keeping the G&S flag flying – does next.
Patience is on at the Kirk Theatre on Saturday, November 9 at 7.30pm. Tickets on 01751 474833 or www.kirktheatre.co.uk/events
Sue Wilkinson