TRIAL and HMS PINAFORE, Grosvenor LOC, St.Pancras Town Hall, Thursday 1 December 1977.

Truthfully this is the best thing I have ever seen Grosvenor do. Orchestra produced a beautiful sound for a amateur orchestra, conducted with great feeling by Philip Lee, a young conductor obviously of great talent. The percussion was the only blot on the orchestral sound, producing dull heavy thuds on the timps and an unsubtle triangle. Lee was doing really interesting things with the music and bringing it alive as few conductors of amateur productions seem able to do: He whipped through the piece with great crispness. Derek Collins' production was equally crisp. The chorus produced some magnificent sound, and skipped and scampered about with great aplomb, though one or two gentlemen got rather hilariously out of time during the head-wagging business (''He shall treat us with awe''). Bertram Bright was a pleasantly acceptable, if rather conventional Judge. Nicholas Clough was an acid-toned tetchy Usher with a splendid sense of comic timing. Stuart Dashwood as the Counsel had a very pleasing voice, though unfortunately his first bit was off-key. It was one of the most enjoyable Counsels I have seen for a long time, though the rococo-song was a bit ragged and lacked style. Pamela Munday was quite good as the Plaintiff. Richard Rayment was a rather dull Defendant, but it was probably the best thing I have seen him do. He perpetrated the unforgivable sin, however, of being very late for his first entrance and the production had to stop and wait for him. He also made a false musical entry at one point. Pinafore did not quite live up to the standard of Trial. The first act was good, but the second was rather dreary. I felt that after hearing "The hours creep on" there was little left worth hearing, nothing really happened that told me anything more about the performance than I already knew at the end of Act 1. This was probably because Act 2 relies heavily on Sir Joseph, Corcoran & Deadeye who were the weakest members of the cast. Christopher Roberts made a dull Sir Joseph. This doesn't matter in Act I - for he is on so little that one doesn't notice it. Nicholas Clough evidently needs to be acting a character, as Corcoran he became dreary in the extreme. Bert Bright was quite inadequate as Deadeye. There is, I suppose no reason why Rackstraw shouldn't be Scottish, and this worked, but the tenor would shout too much. The glory of the evening, however was Janet Crossman's Josephine. It would have been worth coming to it to hear that lovely voice alone, even if the rest had been terrible. MICHAEL WALTERS

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