NODA Report
Date – 7th July 2022
Society – St Andrews Operatic Society
Venue – St Andrews Church
Type of Production – Concert
Director – Jen Moss
Musical Director – Ken Matthews
Assistant Musical Director – Phil Hall
I was delighted to be asked to attend St Andrew’s Operatic Society’s concert “An Evening with Gilbert & Sullivan” as I unfortunately had to miss their Christmas concert due to a clash of commitments.
The concert itself was cleverly put together by Director Jen Moss who unfortunately had to miss the evening performance due to illness. A celebration of the best bits of G&S with a clever storyline told by Gilbert & Sullivan themselves played by Roderick Murray and Keith Armitage respectively explaining to the audience what their key ingredients are to creating a fine G&S opera as they attempt to come up with a new opera on short notice without producing any new material.
Jen came up with a plot for a fictional new opera called “The Band of Brothers” focusing on an underground criminal organisation, the Brothers Murgatroyd formed following a curse on the family who are terrorising the locals. A Judge is sworn to bring them to justice and in true G&S fashion his daughters find themselves embroiled with members of the group forcing him to thrown them into jail. They escape and return under cover of darkness to marry the daughters. Anarchy indeed!
Being staged in the beautiful St Andrews Church, Roker the acoustics were incredibly complimentary. I would have appreciated a cushion though and will be sure to remember one next time! Those pews aren’t particularly easy on the backside, especially if like I was you are recovering from a broken coccyx!
It was a really fun, humorous and well-paced performance throughout. Musical Director Ken Matthews and assistant Phil Hall really brought out the best in the cast members who took part. The voices and arrangements at St Andrews are really on another level. Superb singing, well done all of you. Absolutely beautiful clear gorgeous vocals from everyone and some fantastic expressing and acting going on through song which brought the performances to life. Not a book in sight either, word perfect which I really do appreciate. As an audience member there is nothing worse than looking at the top of people’s heads as they stare into a black folder of music. I am especially appreciative of this level of professionalism when learning that due to illness there were two last minute changes to the cast, with Dick Bradshaw taking the role of the Sergeant and Iolanthe being played by Glynda Backburn. If we weren’t told in advance we would have had no idea, well done to you both.
Movement, props and hints at costume were used throughout to bring the performances to life and were well rehearsed and slick. I loved the sausage rolls, genuinely had me cracked up laughing along with the appearance of the gentlemen in nightdresses!
I can’t emphasise enough how superb everyone’s vocal ability is in this group and together they are sublime. I wrote note on each number while I was there but given every single one reads “superb vocals” I can generalise easily without fear of missing any key elements. The rehearsal time and effort which clearly has gone into making sure the sound is just right was very obvious to all. Well done all of you. I had an absolutely lovely night and I cannot wait for your next one.
Helen Abraham