PRINCESS IDA, D'Oyly Carte O.C., 31st December 1977, Sadler's Wells Theatre.

This was the first visit I managed to make to the Company this season. New Year's Eve is usually worth a special effort, if not for the performance at least for the friends one meets in the foyer and/or the auditorium. On this occasion I sat in the slips and found beside me a young enthusiast whom I had not met before, and with whom I was able to chat in the intervals (there were two, though the programme indicated that Acts 2 & 3 would follow without a break) and with whom I was able to join hands during Auld Lang Syne. After a very poor first Act, the performance picked up at the beginning of Act 2, into a very fine 2nd Act and a fairly good 3rd Act. Royston Nash whipped very fast through Act 1 seemingly with an air of "Right lads, let's got it over", the tempo only relaxed for "expressive glances". Even "Ida was a twelvemonth old" was taken impossibly fast, giving Meston Reid little chance. The main excitement of the evening was the restoration of "Come Mighty Must", which Patricia Leonard sang impeccably - she appeared to have been listening to the Bertha Lewis record and to have been copying her phraseology very carefully. A curious innovation was having the song, not after the speech, but in the middle of it, so that Blanche still exited to dialogue - allowing her two rounds of applause! Pat's Lady Blanche was a revelation - quite the most meaningful and impressive Lady Blanche I have ever seen. Michael Buchan was a good Arac, deep and strong of voice, and nodding his head in a half- witted way. I was also seeing John Ayldon's Florian for the first time (last year he had been ill, and I had seen Glyn Jones), dull perhaps in the first Act, but in the "drag" scene he was tremendous. Barbara Lilley is totally inadequate, both vocally and histrionically for the role of Ida (oh, please come back Jean Hindmarsh!) Geoffrey Shovelton was in good spirits as Cyril, his encore to the "Kissing Song" was a disgraceful piece of exhibitionism (one should not rewrite Sullivan) but it was done with such infectious good will that one had to love it. I have never liked this production of Princess Ida, having found the sets and costumes unnecessarily fussy, though I had to confess that after this performance I began to feel the costumes (though not the sets) beginning to grow on me. I suppose Time partially reconciles one to anything. It might be as well, though, to comment on the weakest point in the production, which is the point at which Ida falls into the stream. As currently done, it is just not clear what is happening, particularly as the applause for the Kissing Song is allowed to cover almost all the dialogue leading up to the incident. Anyone unfamiliar with the plot would be quite baffled. This sort of thing would never be tolerated in an amateur company, so why is it tolerated by D'Oyly Carte? MICHAEL WALTERS

• To Previous Page
• To Next Page
• To No. 9 Home Page
• To Gilbertian Gossip Home Page