Performances 13-16 November 2019

Director: Alison Cooper

Musical Director: Ian Stone

The Merry Widow is Franz Lehar's most popular and enchanting operetta. With dazzling melodies, wit and elegance the story unfolds as the fabulously wealthy widow, Anna, arrives in Paris. Pursued by numerous suitors, complications and misunderstandings abound when at an Embassy party, she rekindles her relationship with her old flame, Danilo. But, will he forsake the Grisettes, the famous dancing girls at Maxim’s, and declare his true feelings for Anna…?

An amateur production by arrangement with Glocken Verlag Ltd (music adapted and arranged by Ronald Hanmer)

Cast

Lighting: David Ames

Photography Mick Mercer

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or "The Gods Grown Old", by W.S. Gilbert and A. Sullivan

Directed by Lynda Barrett-Mercer
Musical Director: Ian Stone

7-10th November Betchworth Memorial Hall

The 'lost' G&S opera

This is a unique production of the earliest G & S work, for which no musical score survives. First staged in 1871 as a Christmas entertainment, it ran for 63 performances, but Sullivan's score was then lost, and the work largely forgotten during the writers' lifetimes - although Sullivan certainly reused at least two of the tunes. The story concerns a group of actors in ancient Greece - the original Thespians - who take over the role of Gods on Mount Olympus so the decrepit deities can take a holiday on earth, with predictably chaotic consequences

Thespis has only occasionally been revived, from the 1950s onwards, sometimes with a score specially composed 'in the style of Sullivan'. Lynda and Ian however have painstakingly created their own score using familiar tunes in Sullivan's later repertoire, but incorporating 'Climbing over Rocky Mountains' (Pirates of Penzance) and 'Little maid of Arcadee' which are known to have been in the original. 

Cast

Production

Rehearsal photos by Mick Mercer and Lynda Barrett-Mercer