Show Reviews: Patience

I was going to review Rocky Horror tonight, but I've left it so long I've found I can't remember a thing about it.   I know I enjoyed it, but just saying that doesn't make for much of a review.   So I thought I'd skip it and review Patience instead.   Patience is a Gilbert and Sullivan and it was put on by Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group.   It follows the story of Patience, the simple milkmaid, who has never been in love.   And she's very glad about that, because it seems to be making all the other ladies thoroughly miserable.   They're all madly in love with the poet Bunthorne, who doesn't return their love, because he's in love with Patience.   Then, Patience's childhood sweetheart Archibald arrives back in the area.   He and Patience fall in love, but Patience rapidly realises that she mustn't love him because he's perfect and therefore her loving him would be selfish, and not real love.   But she tells him to feel free to love her because she's plain ("Yes, that's true"), so his loving her wouldn't be selfish.   As soon as the other ladies see Archibald they immediately transfer their love from Bunthorne to him, and Patience decided to selflessly sacrifice herself and love Bunthorne.   However, she eventually confesses to Bunthorne that she really loves Archibald.   Angry Bunthorne tells Archibald to become an ordinary man or he'll curse him.   Archibald agrees, mostly to escape the cloying affections of the other ladies.   When he has done so, he loses some of his perfection in Patience's eyes, leaving her free to love him, and so the whole mess is resolved!   The ladies all go back to their old fiances, and Bunthorne ends up alone.   I do love a good ridiculous Gilbert and Sullivan plot!  

Interestingly this production had a shortage of women.   Usually it's men who are in short supply.   I enjoyed the sets and costumes and everyone's performances, though Patience was a bit serious.   I like my Gilbert and Sullivan done frivolously.   But great music, great songs, and a very enjoyable show.       

Fringe Shows

Today I thought I'd share with you my thoughts on some of the Fringe shows I went to see this summer.   To start with, the Makropulos Case.   It's a Czech opera, and was part of the International Festival.   The story was a bit odd.   There's an ongoing legal battle about an inheritence, and a woman turns up, who knew a strangely large amount about the case.   She offers to tell people where the will is in exchange for a document kept with it.  It's all very mysterious, but in the end it comes out that the document is the formula for the elixir of life.   She needs it to make herself some more because the dose she took many years ago is wearing off.   But in the end she doesn't, and grows old and dies onstage.   Now odd stories are fine if they're done right, but what really bothered me about this opera was the translation.   It was so clumsy!   It distracted me all the way through.  Very jarring.  Would have much rather seen it in Czech!   It also struck me as odd that there were no arias at all.   It was all cantanta.   Having said all that the music was gorgeous.   I think I would have really enjoyed it if it wasn't for the awful translation.  

Next, Gilbert and Sullivan in Brief(s).   This was a brief introduction to all 14 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.   There were four people on stage, playing the parts of the four main characters that Gilbert and Sullivan operettas always have.   Amid much clowning about on stage, they delivered a summary of the story and history of each operetta and performed a song or two from them.   It was educational, the singing was excellent, and it was a very entertaining show.   For me though, it was too brief!   It missed out lots of my favorite songs.   Could have done with being a bit longer I thought.   But I did enjoy it.  

And finally, Irish Shorts 2.   This was one of two shows put on by the same theatre company.   It was two different short Irish plays by Sean O'Casey: Bedtime Story and A Pound on Demand.   The first starred one of my friends as an Irish boy the morning after a one night stand, full of remorse and fear, trying to persuade the girl to leave quickly and quietly.   It was very atmospheric and funny, and the cast were great.   The second was also very funny.   It was about two drunk and uneducated Irishmen trying to withdraw a pound from one of them's post office account for more alcohol.   This proved to be easier said than done.   The cast of this one were also fantastic.   A very entertaining show.   I can't find a picture specific to the show, but this is the logo of Theatre Alba, the company who put it on.

Shows!

Rather than do seperate entries for each show i've been to recently I thought I'd just combine them into one big glorious review post!   The three shows I've seen over the last couple of weeks are HMS Pinafore, put on by the Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group, the Beauty and the Beast ballet, by Northern Ballet, and Spamalot.

HMS Pinafore I found thoroughly enjoyable!   It's a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.   Having seen quite a few EUSOG performances over the past few years I have to say it compares favourably.   All the cast did a great job, sets, costumes and choreography were simple but effective, and the space onstage was used very well.   The orchestra had a couple of tiny slip ups towards the beginning, but these were barely noticeable.   The show was typical Gibert and Sullivan, full of colourful characters, incredibly catchy songs, with a suitably ridiculous twist at the end.   The script did lack some of the farcicality I have come to expect from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but I suspect this is due to it being one of their earlier shows and they had not yet fully found their style which we know and love.   All in all, though, a very enjoyable show!   Good work!

  

Beauty and the Beast was a new ballet and I think it was a little unusual, but it was unusual done right!   The dancing was very modern in lot of respects, but not modern in a naff way where the dancers just look like they're having a spazz attack on stage!   It was thoroughly beautiful, and drove the story forward at a pretty quick pace for ballet!   The costumes and sets were very creative and very pleasing to the eye and were used very well, and there were some genuinely funny moments!   The main issue I had with it was there were a couple of places towards the beginning where the stage hands had to nip behind bits of set and fiddle about and nip off again.   Pretty unprofessional if you ask me!   They could have found a different solution to that!   Even having a member of the cast duck behind for a couple of seconds would have looked better!  And the beast did slightly look as though he was wearing bondage gear...   Something that surprised me was that it did not have its own new music.   It used various pieces of French classical music.   That's not usual is it?   I've certainly never seen that before!   But despite a few little niggles I had, it was a brilliant evening!   Highly recommended!

Spamalot is the Monty Python musical, based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.   It was what you might expect, ie. very silly!   It was interesting for someone like me who knows Holy Grail inside out and back to front to see how they had adapted it for stage.   Most of the main elements from Holy Grail's plot were kept (it had a plot??), though I was slightly disappointed about the lack of Castle Anthrax!   But other old friends like the Black Knight, Dennis and Tim all had their bit to do.   They also added in a female character by giving the Lady of the Lake an actual part in the show rather than a passing reference.   They obviously used the songs from Holy Grail and added in a few new ones, along with a rather predictable appearence of a sing-along Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.   Musically my favourite part was The Song That Goes Like This, the Lady of the Lake and Sir Galahad's lovesong.   Or rather song about lovesongs!   It has a lovely tune and the lyrics are hilarious!   I was impressed with the cast both vocally and acting wise, despite a little corpsing during the Knights Who Say Ni! scene.   But who could blame them.   Costumes were great, and so were the sets, which looked distinctly Terry Gilliamesque, although there was not a lot of scene changing.   The stage did look a bit cramped though.   They were only using a small part of it and could have done with giving themselves some more room, in my opinion.   For me the funniest aspect of the show was that they subtly brought in a lot of jokes from Monty Python's Flying Circus that only real afficionados would spot.   The topical jokes were quite funny as well.   All in all, a very funny and silly night out, and I'm glad I went to see it, but quite honestly, I don't think I would go and see it again.