Patience

Review of Patience in The Grimsby Telegraph - 26th June 2007

LIGHT-HEARTED TALE OF QUEST FOR LOVE

The New London Opera Group returned to Louth Playgoers' Riverhead Theatre with Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.

What tremendous fun it was. The songs are witty and wonderful, as you would expect from Gilbert and Sullivan. The performances were exceptional and the whole production was superbly directed and choreographed. Patience - or Bunthorne's Bride as it is also known - is a lively, light-hearted spoof with a wide appeal.

On the surface, a frivolous story about love and infatuation, it satirises the popular 19th Century craze of aestheticism - art for art's sake - and it is delightfully absurd and implausible. The plot focuses on a pretty and naive milkmaid called Patience and her quest for unselfish love. Throw in two pretentious poets, the officers of the 35th Dragoon Guards and a gaggle of swooning, lovesick maidens and the result is hilarious.

Without exception, the cast is very strong and there are some outstanding performances from Chris Cann as the portly but positively balletic Bunthorne, Charlotte Collier, whose comedy characterisation of Lady Jane is a joy to watch, and Joanna Soane's crystal clear voice and interpretation of Patience.

This is a clever and thoroughly entertaining comic operetta which is full of sharply witty references to a bygone period, but which has not lost one iota of its appeal today.

HELEN APPLETON