H.M.S. Pinafore

Rumbustious music and gay abandon are but part of any Gilbert & Sullivan production. It is good that we still find pleasure in Gilbertian whimsy when the time and occasion of his parody is past. Saturday night's audience gave a fillip to this production which was lacking on Friday; reminding us that it is laughter which generates laughs and that the success of any production is very much a two-way affair. The best of G. & S. will be got only by those who answer Shakespeare's classic appeal to the imagination, prepared to bridge by fancy the stream of satiric sentiment and social idiom which nip between the banks of one generation and another.

The School production was again by Mr. Bolton, under the musical direction of Mr. Waine, against a backcloth of convincing and finely constructed nautical chicanery. There were guns which really went off, masthead lights winking from splendidly three-dimensional men-o-war, leading lights to cheer the landfall, a working bosun's chair, capstan by sanction of H. 0. Wills, sheets and halyards and spars in liberal profusion. Even the ocean wave itself intruded, when the bobbing mast of the Admiralty launch suggested a more nauseous party of "cousins and aunts". Make-up was good, with leading roles well characterised (Corcoran I thought particularly so) and a freshness in the chorus faces often absent in school productions. Much credit, too, to the women of the wardrobe, long suffering 'Penelope's tasked with the colourful woof and warp of any musical.

The orchestra roused us with a broadside of drums to "Send her victorious" and followed with some sweet playing from the strings and some good passages of light accompaniment. Of Singing highlights I found Josephine's soliloquy from Act II outstanding. Corcoran's entrance was convincing and well worded and Josephine made her mark with a fine command of tempo and diction. From the sublime to the ridiculous, Corcoran carried well throughout—memorable was the duet with Deadeye. Sir Joseph delivered the Queen's Na-vee with panache, and was principle source of delight in the trio of Act II. Buttercup added gypsy bewitchment to contralto virtuosity by compelling hands and a speaking bass voice. Ralph Rackstraw had moments of uncertainty, but his nightingale song was delightfully right in feeling and I enjoyed "This night shall make us one". The chorus was generally well in sympathy with the changing moods of the principals—one recalls "Again the Cat" and their attention in Buttercup's denouncement. Very satisfying was the grouping in Corcoran's entrance. A mutinous Bobstay sang well and with Deadeye one felt a note would never slip. Of mark by higher standards, the acting of Biddle warrants special praise.

This performance suffered in the estimation of some by the traditional first night's playing in front of the School. The danger, of course, is that it will jeopardise the later performance by an excess (rather than the reverse) of lively, if uncritical and untimely, appreciation, the more so with plays whose idiom is no longer fashionable. But this is an adult view and not a little sophisticated. The audiences of Greek comedy, Elizabethan tragedy and Victorian opera threw their rotten eggs and rude guffaws better than us, and it is worth mention that uproarious and undignified laughter may convey a spirit which mere politeness cannot. Better this 14