United Kingdom International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival 2025 [3] – Peak Opera, Patience: Soloists and Chorus, with Orchestra of the National Gilbert & Sullivan Festival / Dave Anstice-Pim (conductor). Buxton Opera House, Derbyshire, 7.8.2025. (RW)
Performing at the Festival clearly has a magnetic effect on some of the amateur groups who return every year to give a one-night performance. This production by Peak Opera is their 19th appearance at Buxton Opera House and it drew nearly a full house. Their polished performances are helped with familiarity of this theatre’s acoustics and orchestra audibility, but the show has to be assembled in one week of rehearsal. The soloists were all strong and were supported by a well-rehearsed and sonorous chorus who did full justice to Sullivan’s powerful Act I finale.
Rather special was the inclusion of the Duke’s lost song. It was dropped when Gilbert decided that it tended to hold up the action, yet its vocal lines were permanently pasted in the back of Sullivan’s manuscript score. It has since been superbly reconstructed for orchestra by Dr David Russell Hulme. Here it seems, perhaps, that the song would have been better transposing down to match the register of the Duke’s vocal range.
The key roles of Bunthorne, Grosvenor, Patience and Jane were highlights of the evening. The comic mannerisms of Bunthorne were masterful in their delivery and I did enjoy some of David Thomson’s subtle asides that were tastefully done. His meticulous routines were deliciously comic with unexpected head-turns and fidgety fingerwork.
To give a new slant to G&S comedy doesn’t always work or can be overplayed. Here though the subtleties were fresh and well presented. Ian Henderson’s direction was first class. The choreography was well planned and especially that of the cast and Grosvenor’s movements in the Act I finale, ‘But Who is this’. Interestingly, Neil Smith in his pre-curtain introduction to the opera mentioned that in this performance Bunthorne would be wearing John Reed’s D’Oyly Carte wig, bequeathed to the Festival with other artefacts when this star performer died. Such snippets of history help make the Festival unique, and they help encourage audience interest.
The tear-drenched hankies being wrung out at the end of the chorus’s weepy ‘Twenty love-sick Maidens’ was the first of many fresh asides that coloured the performance. I liked Patience’s character being played with a Welsh accent that was later picked up by Grosvenor. The fact that she replaced Gilbert’s wooden bucket with a heavy churn was also a nice touch for it fitted in with Grosvenor’s Act II ‘Magnet and Churn’ song. An extra role was created for young Alfie Eriksson as a Page who was fearless in prodding a dragoon into action and later assisting Lady Jane with her cello.
The choreography within the vocal numbers was nicely arranged and looked natural. The Dragoon trio ‘It’s clear that Medieval art’ with drooping lilies and statuesque poses was admirable. All principals gave clarity of diction and sang superbly. The Colonel’s song was not only heard to perfection, but I very much likened Simon Wilson’s timbre to that of Donald Adams who played this part in the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company for over a decade and is still remembered. A simple-minded yet logically speaking Patience, (Laura Jamie Anstice) put across her innocence beautifully in her faultless singing while the squabbling interaction between Bunthorne and Grosvenor was truly believable. The double chorus of the Dragoons and Maidens was exceptionally well delivered under conductor Dave Anstice Pim’s direction and the Festival orchestra was sensitive not to drown the singers. This was a memorable performance.
Raymond Walker
Featured Image: Patience: ‘I shall have to be contented with a tulip or lily’ © Charles Smith
Production:
Director – Ian Henderson
Choreography – Ian Henderson, Frances & Sophia Eriksson
Lighting designer – Peter Blackmore
Costumes – The Boyz & Lichfield Costume Hire
Cast:
Colonel Calverley – Simon Wilson
Major Murgatroyd – Alexander Baltatzis
Duke of Dunstable – Gunnar Söderhielm
Reginald Bunthorne – David Thomson
Archibald Grosvenor – Liam Geoghegan
Solicitor – Louis Dell’Ava
Page to the Duke – Alfie Eriksson
Lady Angela – Helena Culliney
Lady Saphir – Sera Wright
Lady Ella – Lena Liman
Lady Jane – Anna Loveday
Patience – Laura Jamie Anstice
Why would you think the Duke’s song should transposed down out of interest?