No 6 -- April 1977 Edited by Michael Walters
POSTSCRIPT ON UTOPIA & GRAND DUKE at The Savoy. Derrick McClure on the remarks printed in previous numbers of Gilbertian Gossip.
The comments on the DOC's Utopia & Grand Duke were very interesting - but could nobody see how nonsensical it is to compare a concert performance to an actual production? I've a nasty suspicion that the DC deliberately did only a concert performance of Grand Duke in order to give a bad impression of it - or does that sound paranoid? [Yes, it does! MPW] I wasn't surprised at the comment in The Savoyard that the audiences had been more impressed with Utopia than with Grand Duke, but I'd hoped for better things from your contributors. Of course Utopia came across better - a dramatic performance of it would come across better than a concert performance of Iolanthe. That must have been an interesting angle to Utopia, the "imperialist" slant given by placing it in an Arabian setting. By the way, did Charles Hayter really write "the natives of civilised countries?" Very well said, if so! A point though: is it not surprising that Gilbert, an archetypal Victorian Englishman, would satirise imperialism as much? He bombasts a lot of English institutions in Utopia, but is he actually attacking imperialism, or is he not rather using the exotic setting simply to shew up the absurdity of the English customs, as in Mikado? If the Polynesians manage to run their country on English lines better than the English do, surely G's meaning is not that the English ought to leave the Polynesians alone - its something which may be true, but put in this form betrays a presupposition not very admirable in Gilbert, namely, that the English are no better than a bunch of Polynesians? I can't see Gilbert actually believing that natives ought not to be subject to English rule! It was taken for granted that England ought to rule the Indians, who had a much more highly developed civilisation than the Polynesians. I was always surprised that John Reed was cast as Scaphio, and I note that none of your contributors seemed to think very much of him. It's surely an overstatement to say that "it would be impossible for any actor in a single production to realise all S's potentialities", but Reed has rather too unvarying a style - he doesn't even bring out the vast differences between the characters he usually plays, making them all funny no doubt but all funny in the same way - and I can't see him making a success of so different a role. [John Wolfson in "Final Curtain" has much to say about Scaphio, but Derrick's remarks were written before the book appeared. MPW] Checking up, I see that the role was originally sung by W.H. Denny, who also created Wilfred & Don Alhambra, and partnered by somebody called John le Hay about whom I can't find any other details. [See last GG ]. It looks as if the "Grossmith" part in Utopia was meant to be Tarara - even so, its a very different role from the other Grossmith roles, and much less conspicuous (was Passmore's style very unlike Grossmith's?) [The available evidence seems to suggest that it was. MPW] Its an interesting question to what extent the very different types of characters in the later operas from the Sorcerer-through-Gondoliers sequence is due to changes in the Company - though similarities between Mountebanks and Grand Duke in this respect (particularly in the soprano & tenor parts) suggest that this wasn't the only reason - it was interesting that somebody (you?) thought Reed's Scaphio suggested Tarara ! The way I see the two of them is still basically - Phantis as a big one, a bully with a very weak head and a soft streak; Scaphio as a snarling sinister villain. Very obviously one being the brains and the other the brawn of the partnership - and the King as a slight creature, apparently gentle and timid (which makes the self-dramatisation of his first song ludicrous) but with reserves of shrewdness and stubbornness which enable him eventually to come out on top.
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