Festival Ruddigore

Just back from the Festival production of Ruddigore, directed and conducted by Andrew Nicklin. This show is cast from submitted videos and produced by the festival itself, so we can assume it is not done on a shoestring. The published cast list did not show a Dick Dauntless, the lead tenor, but it developed here that they offered the young Brazilan member of Savoynet, Guillermo Gama the role.

Starting out, the orchestra sounded wonderful in this spectacular overture. The 9 young bridesmaids who began the show did not have enough sound to fill the hall, and it developed a bit later that ther were 7 more ladies in reserve who appeared as townspeople but were not in this first scene and added a lot of sound and support to the women. Apparently, according to the adjudicator, these 9 were all "graduates" of their (now defunct) Young Artistes program.

Dame Hannah was a good actress, describing her relationship with Sir Roderic quite wistfully but she was not commanding in the song "Sir Rupert Murgatroyd" and strayed from pitch a few times. Her warmth worked against her when chasing Robin with a poniard.

Rose was pretty and sang nicely but I found her dialog and lyrics hard to understand. Robin was OK but had no real strong characterization as a shy young man. I thought he was stiff, but his singing was OK.

Guillermo Gama as Dauntless has a nice young light tenor voice, but strained at the high notes and appeared to fake his B-flats which double with Rose. He was best in the small ensemble numbers and in the second act. He is as pleasant guy but needs to develop more presence and sound.

"My boy you may take it from me" was very hard to understand.

Elise's Mad Margaret could have been better. She is not a mezzo and notes below G were simply inaudible, including the opening notes and "Mad? I? Yes, very." She proved a stiff actress and her first act comedy as a mad woman did not work well. Her second act was much better. I complemented her later on being the only one of the Matter-patter trio I could actually understand. They took it at a rip-roaring pace for no good reason and the other two couldn't handle it.


I did not like their Despard at all. He was Estonian and apparently professional, but he crooned and slid through his songs and was in no way menacing or funny. His pitch was all over the place but he was very oily.

The chorus after the weak opening with the 9 girls was uniformly excellent. They looked and sounded great. The Spring/Winter chorale at the end of Act I was lovely, and here GG as Dauntless sounded great.

When the men entered as Bucks and Blades they were all wearing variations on some kind of military uniform, as Gilbert apparently had intended. However, each was in a different color scheme and it made for a rather garish effect.

When Sir Roderic appeared out of the picture frame in Act II, he was wearing a green vest with orange panels in it under his black suit, and when lit by an orange spot, he looked like a bumble-bee. When in more normal light, (he was never properly lit after that) he looked more like a leprechaun. However, his singing and acting were just fine if you didn't look too closely at the costume.

The Old Oak Tree duet was passing fine, but nothing special.

The did the Basingstoke finale including the 4/4 version of "Oh happy the lily."
They did not do "Away remorse" or "For 35 years" and did not add the extra ghost music.

The adjudicator loved everything, which made me wonder if she felt it impolitic make any criticisms of a festival-sponsored production. It was just an OK Ruddigore.

Of the 3 I saw, the South African Gondoliers was by far the best.

In the cabaret that followed, Elise sang her "Neath this lattice"
special (From Rose of Persia). She introduced it by noting that she had been singing mezzo all week and needed to assure herself she still had high notes. Then she said that no one should even try to sing along! Her high notes (I think this goes to around A above high C) are not well produced, just a parlor trick. She needs some serious coaching to improve her tone up there.

Home tomorrow. (Sitting in the Manchester airport now.)