Harrogate International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival bounces back after a year’s silence

THE International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, founded in 1994 by the indefatigable Ian Granville Smith and his son Neil has bounced back after a year’s silence.

Ian sadly died just three months after the 2019 Festival. Since then, the family have endured the additional trauma of having to cancel last summer’s event due to lockdown.

Festival director Janet Smith, Neil Smith and the Halifax based team have moved mountains to ensure next month’s return of the International Festival to Buxton and Harrogate. It speaks volumes for the entrepreneurial spark of this talented family whose skills set embraces production, marketing, graphic design and photography as well as managing singers. They run both the Gilbert and Sullivan International Festival and the UK’s sole professional Gilbert and Sullivan touring company and orchestra without any public funding.

The National G&S Company and Festival Orchestra will feature in new productions of Patience, The Mikado, and HMS Pinafore at the Royal Hall.

The Mikado is directed by Simon Butteriss, that peerless purveyor of the patter song. Simon will add to his astonishing tally of 3,000 performances as Ko-Ko, the cheap tailor turned Lord High Executioner. He will also play another favourite role, that of “fleshly” poet Reginald Bunthorne in Patience.

Yeoman of the Guard, the darkest of the Savoy operas and the frothy Pirates of Penzance will be presented by Forbear! Theatre. This innovative young company’s adventurous casting of Patience, a wicked satire on the meaningless fads of the Victorian aesthetic movement, wowed Royal Hall audiences at the 2019 Festival.

Charles Court Opera’s pared-down productions in which the principals double as chorus, have long been festival favourites. This year,“the masters of G&S in small spaces” present their enchanting version of Iolanthe which shows how easily Parliament can be manipulated by the fairies.

Express Gilbert and Sullivan, Charles Court’s second offering, is billed as a side-splitting spoof on the classic railway murder mystery.

A wealth of Festival Fringe events range from a G&S masterclass by international baritone Donald Maxwell, to an illustrated talk on Sex and Death in the Victorian theatre.

The Festival organisers have addressed the likely reluctance of some customers to return to packed theatres at this time. Therefore, a maximum 55 per cent of capacity is available at each performance and social distancing will be maintained.

Please phone 01422-323252 for bookings and further information, or go to www.gsfestivals.org

by Geoffrey Mogridge