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“His Excellency” at the Lyric
The Lute issue 144, Dec. 1894, p. 375
The new comic opera by Messrs. W.S. Gilbert and F. Osmond Carr has been so well received that it is likely to hold the boards of the Lyric Theatre for many months. The reunion of such old Savoyards as Misses Jessie Bond and Alice Barnett, Messrs. George Grossmith and Rutland Barrington has undoubtedly been welcome to a public appreciative of services in the past, and Mr. Gilbert has of course taken care to study the respective styles of those who worked so well for him in former times.
As the practical joke loving Governor Griffenfeld, who eventually falls into his own trap, Mr. Grossmith has a prominent part in which he can sing and dance to his heart’s content, whilst Mr. Rutland Barrington, as the disguised Regent, has one of the very best songs of the piece in the quaint satire of national anthems, “A King though he’s pestered with cares.”
Miss Jessie Bond as the coquettish Nanna is as bright and active as when she was first associated with Mr. Gilbert’s operas, commencing with H.M.S. Pinafore, and Miss Barnett is exceedingly comic as the old-fashioned Dame Courtlandt, in whose breast there is a continuous conflict between what she terms “a diabolical temper and an iron will.” Miss Nancy McIntosh invests with much charms the ballad singer Christina, and Mr. John Le Hay is second to no member of the company in his mirth-provoking powers as the self-satisfied Syndic.
Mr. Charles Kenningham, Mr. Arthur Playfair, Miss Ellaline Terriss, and Miss Gertrude Aylward also do justice to their respective characters. Dr. Osmond Carr’s music has all the requisite verve and impulse. It is invariably brisk and catching, and answers its purpose more effectually than would an ambitious style of composition.
Altogether His Excellency forms a merry entertainment.
Page modified 22 October 2020