CHAPEL End Savoy Players offered an agreeable 90-minute escape from the rain with their double bill of one-act Savoy Opera curtain raisers as part of the G&S Festival.
On the evidence of this meritorious couple, each with seven musical numbers in Gilbert and Sullivan-style, these long-forgotten pieces of late-Victorian theatre (there are 20 others) are jolly little entertainments with a sort of endearing innocence
and daft plots.
They are pleasing and undemanding, designed as starters for the main course following, usually a full-scale work, as CESP did in 2007 when they prefaced Pirates of Penzance with Captain Billy, a pirate who returns home after a long absence
Although all the music (by François Cellier) was there, Harry Greenbank's dialogue was pruned and adapted for the occasion – 'home' becomes Penzance, for instance, and numerous G&S allusions added.
Greenbank's prose for Mr Jericho, a famous jam-maker who sorts out an impoverished, incognito earl and his lovesick son, reduced to driving an omnibus round Kensal Green, seemingly remained untouched.
Ernest Ford's music has a higher level of finish than that of Cellier (not quite in the same league as older brother Alfred on this showing), both scores – expertly played by pianist Helen Kerr Wallace – serving their modest purpose with pleasing tunes.
With producer Rowena Sayer calling the shots, five cast members in each brought limited acting ability and singing to their parts, although neither work demands much more than adequate means – in this respect all ten were generally fine.
John Simpson (Mr Jericho) had vocal resonance but singing voices were not big with little or no extension upwards but all were pleasantly tuned.
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