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Great Yarmouth 
Gilbert & Sullivan Society

was due to present

Patience
(or Bunthorne's Bride)

Tuesday 8th - Saturday 12th May 2007

THE CAST WOULD HAVE BEEN

Chorus
Vivian Burgess,  Paul Gooch, Wendy Gooch, Maurice Jeckells, 
Richard Le Cheminant, David Long,  Sheila Martin, Harvey Richards,  
Bridget Robinson,  Enid Thwaites,  Helen Thwaites,  Ken Wardle

STAGE DIRECTOR
Stella Brownsea

MUSICAL DIRECTOR
Karen Smith

However.....

The year started well with a new Musical Director with lots of fresh ideas and enthusiasm. After the auditions the show was cast with a terrific line up of principals and supported by a full chorus. 
That is when our good luck ended.

Late in 2006, the Society received the news that St. George’s Theatre had to be closed for emergency structural repairs. No-body could tell us whether these would be completed in time for the show in May.

One of the principals had to reluctantly withdraw from the show because of work commitments. A replacement was found from the men's chorus but in the meantime, four other chorus men had to drop out for various valid reasons leaving us with a badly depleted men’s chorus and only one tenor! The committee considered cancelling the show at this stage as it would be ridiculous to have a such a small chorus of Dragoons! Fortunately, we managed to persuade some ex and ‘resting’ members to rejoin and 'swell the ranks'.

Early in 2007, our Musical Director was rushed into hospital where she remained for some time. Fortunately, our Stage Director used to be our Musical Director so she was quite capable of picking up the baton (literally!) However capable she may be, she could not read the music, play the piano and watch what is happening on stage at the same time. This meant staging rehearsals took much longer than planned.

As the year progressed, it became less and less likely that St. George’s would be ready for May. This was finally confirmed to the Society in March. We had already booked an alternative venue at Great Yarmouth Town Hall, however the stage there was completely different to St George’s meaning most chorus scenes had to be re-set. Also, there were no facilities for lighting or sound, no structural support for scenery, no proscenium arch or curtains. All these had to be rented in if we were to put on a show of our usual high standard. We also lost the in-house technical expertise of St. George’s staff and would have to hire in replacement sound and lighting engineers, front of house / health and safety personnel and box office staff.

Three weeks before the show, the committee analysed the figures and came to the conclusion that staging the 2007 production of Patience at the new venue would, at a conservative guess, lead to a loss of over £7000 and financially ruin the Society. They therefore recommended to the membership that the production should be cancelled. After a lengthy, emotional yet positive discussion, the Society voted unanimously to support the committee’s recommendation. The general feeling was that cutting costs would lead to a second-rate production which would ruin the Society’s reputation and following - something we were not prepared to sacrifice!

At the annual AGM in May, the new committee was charged with the job of planning the way forward for the Society. St. George’s is likely to be out of action for some time so there are many other options to discuss, including finding an alternative theatre, performing concert versions only or even taking the production ‘on tour’ to several venues. 

One thing was very clear from the AGM. Our friendly members remain as loyal, as united and as enthusiastic as ever to performing high-quality productions of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.

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