Final Curtain for D'Oyly Carte

By John Skow

After more than a century, a great troupe disbands

There were empty seats in London's Adelphi Theater a fortnight ago, and those loyalists who had come were applauding their own memories as much as the D'Oyly Carte production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Listeners knew not just Nanki-Poo's Wandering Minstrel ballad by heart, they knew Pooh-Bah's dialogue. They would have grumbled if any of the costumes, designed by Charles Ricketts in 1926, had been changed. But of course, there were no changes.

It is a D'Oyly Carte tradition that Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, proscribe a modern villain or two in his first-act showstopper, I've Got a Little List. And sure enough, Baritone Alistair Donkin ticked off an added starter in his roll of "society offenders who might well be underground, and who never would be missed." Spinning impishly about the stage in much the same gyrations that the great Martyn Green had learned from Sir Henry Lytton (inherited by Lytton from the original Ko-Ko, George Grossmith, who had learned his stage business from Director W.S. Gilbert himself in 1885), he doomed "that singular anomaly, the striking railway-ist--I know he 'II not be missed, he never will be missed." Londoners, plagued by labor squabbles that shut down commuter trains, laughed wryly.

Alas, it was Ko-Ko himself who would be missed by sorrowful G&S fans in England and the U.S. (where the troupe made its first tour in 1879-80, for the premiere of Pirates of Penzance). Last week, after more than a century of continuous operation as a troupe, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company gave its last performance and disbanded. In the end there were not enough Savoyard loyalists to pay the costs of a 100-member company. The Arts Council of Great Britain, hard pressed to subsidize the National Theater and the Old Vic, rejected an appeal for funds. Sir. Charles Forte (created Lord Forte two months ago), of the Trusthouse Forte hotel chain, launched a fund drive to reform and modernize D'Oyly Carte, but it will be several months before anyone knows whether the necessary -L-1 million can be found.

Manager Peter Riley admits that D'Oyly Carte must modernize if it is to be revived, although any tinkering with tradition has always brought roars from the faithful. The "company's productions in recent years have seemed static, preserved in amber, cluttered with the gestures and mannerisms of venerated ghosts. There has been too much reverent looking backward to the epochal moment in 1875 when Richard D'Oyly Carte induced the highly successful playwright William Schwenck Gilbert to write the libretto that became

Trial by Jury, and persuaded the aspiring grand opera composer Arthur Sullivan to write the accompanying melodies. D'Oyly Carte's brand-new Savoy, to which Patience moved in 1881 from the Opera Comique, was the first theater in London to be lighted by electricity. The impresario himself had to reassure the audience that the innovation was safe. Today it is clear the troupe needs some fresh and electrical impetus and perhaps even a new Savoy.

It is possible to present Gilbert and Sullivan in a way that is bright, fresh and respectful of tradition. That much has been proved by Producer Joseph Papp and Director Wilfred Leach of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Their Pirates of Penzance, with Pop Singers Linda Ronstadt and Rex Smith, was a smash hit in Central Park and on Broadway. The Broadway production is still running, and the road company is drawing cheers in Chicago. Ronstadt and the rest are filming Pirates in London, and a British stage cast will open the Papp production at the Drury Lane Theater there in May. Riley, who saw Pirates in Central Park and thought it "absolutely marvelous," has reason to hope that Londoners will endorse the stage show. A benefactor gave the faltering troupe .-L-150,000 to invest in Papp's London Pirates, and the profits, if any, will be used to resuscitate D'Oyly Carte. The idea of old conventions saved by audacious newcomers is an irony that Savoyards may resent. But Gilbert would have cherished it, and Sullivan would have set it to music. --By John Skow

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.