Patience

I do enjoy a good Gilbert and Sullivan and this certainly was one of those. The audience laughed all the way through the performance and the subtlety of the humour was not lost one iota. The direction was excellent as usual; no-one was out of character throughout the whole production, so much so that I couldn’t decide who to look at as there was so much going on. The chorus all had individual moves and actions which made it all the more interesting.

The principal characters were well chosen and fitted their parts very well. Rachel Roper, playing Patience, has a maturity beyond her young age and a voice that just gets better and better. Her accents were extremely funny too. In fact every member of the cast had their moments of hilarity; the ladies fighting over the attentions of Reginald Bunthorne (Alan Durman) and then Archibald Grosvenor (Cliff Spooner) who hammed their parts brilliantly.

The Dragoon Guards led by Colonel Calverley (Jim Smith), Major Murgatroyd (Ian Roper) and The Duke of Dunstable (Russell Painter) were solid and strong and suitably miffed by the actions of the females. Again the direction of these three was meticulous.

But for me Gill Haslam as Lady Jane stole the show! She was brilliant and her cello playing was hysterically funny and so were the rest of the antics she got up to.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show and had a lovely evening.

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