Here we go again

(from 2013)

I have a horrible feeling that I promised someone I wouldn’t write about going to the International Gilbert and Sullivan festival ever again. Not after doing so last year. But when you get to my age, three things start to happen. First your memory starts to go... And the other two I can’t remember...

I am sure that if this gets posted and read by anyone who knows me, someone will unkindly remind me of my promise – if indeed I made it – and, who knows, it may have been made somewhere else entirely.

So, anyway, here we are again at Buxton in the British Peak District. Actually for the last time, as the festival moves further north next year after a mighty spat with the local council over money. We have crammed in the usual half a dozen shows, a lecture here and there, tramped around a stately home here and there, behaved like real ancient tourists, and my feet hurt.

Since the readers of this blog are predominantly American, I must stress that the best show we saw actually has an American connotation - Pirates of Penzance – of which we saw two disparate versions. The American connection goes back to Gilbert and Sullivan feeling really aggrieved at American theater companies ripping off their work and – as they saw it – mauling it considerably. What probably rankled more was the loss of royalties. To protect their new baby, Pirates of Penzance, from copyright pirates, the two men travelled to America for a premiere in New York. On arrival, Sullivan found to his horror he’d left half the music behind and had a frantic flap working from memory to reconstruct it. It was finished with only a couple of days to spare. Then the American musicians decided that this wasn’t ‘operetta’ but ‘opera’ and refused to play without more money. Sullivan was all set to fulfil a threat to accompany the American premiere on piano with a friend on harmonium, but the musicians finally caved in at the eleventh hour. (Insert Ethel Merman belting out “There’s no business like show business...”)

Pirates is Mrs O’s favorite piece – and this was probably the best performance we have ever seen. Even the duller songs, like the Major’s “Sighing of the Breeze” in Act 2, were enlivened by the accompanying action. Major Stanley’s daughters – apart from Mabel - all wore spectacles. There was a nice bit of business when one lost hers, and kept on wandering off stage blind as a bat and having to be rescued. Long before I was born, my grandmother sang the part of Ruth at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. She was of an age and shape to play all the middle aged women’s parts that Gilbert wrote so cruelly.

The second version was put on in the youth festival, which we sampled for the first time last year. In the youth festival everyone is under 18 – in some cases a lot under 18, and that is including the orchestra. One conductor looked about 12. A professional theater director worked with the youngsters for a week beforehand. Then another professional director from London gave a critique. One of the nicest comments was: “I hope when you go back home you will all find you’ve failed your A level (University entry) exams. That way you will be forced to seek a career in the theatre.”

It was good to see the youngsters perform so well again. We used to notice at these events that the audience was generally of “a certain age” – silver in the stubble as the folk song goes – and that meant the whole thing was in danger of dying out. But now there is quite a lot of youth – competing, performing and watching.

With a nod to Mrs O’s past, we went to a lecture on the Spanish Zarzuelas. These were operettas contemporary with G and S – initially from Madrid, but then spreading out over Spain and the Spanish speaking world in the nineteenth century. The form still survives; whereas in Britain, operettas turned into musical comedies and then just musicals. The main difference between the Spanish and English oeuvre, is that Zarzuelas are full of jolly music and silly dances, and G and S are full of jolly music and silly words. I am more a fan of silly words myself.

The last time we were in Spain we stocked up on Zarzuela DVDs, which have sat on a shelf unwatched ever since. But each time we come to Buxton, we buy the performances we have just seen (unless they are dreadful) and have watched them.

Perhaps the only slightly dud note at these festivals is the next step up from the youth productions, namely the university productions. Nearly a dozen universities were in competition, and these performances have a habit of ‘updating’ the material. Now I don’t have an intrinsic problem with new settings or costumes – it’s like seeing Shakespeare set in different eras, but changing BOTH the music and the lyrics seem a step too far.  Also, some of the university companies appear to have a bad case of arrested development, as if they have only just discovered SEX. Wow - you know – aren’t we clever, aren’t we daring – as if no-body on earth before them had thought of it.  And they sometimes turn classic 19^th century pieces into something resembling a juvenile school play put on with a snigger when the teachers weren’t looking. They misjudge their core audience at their peril. This year wasn’t quite so bad, but - harrumph - last year there was ONE performance...

(Break for steam to come out of top of an Occasional head. But you have to remember that I am now well and truly a GOP. That’s Grumpy Old Person to you!)

In the words of the Mikado, I’m sure there must be a way to let the punishment fit the crime.