PATIENCE by Gilbert and Sullivan, Charles Court Opera Company at Wiltons Music Hall 9 – 13 September 2025
‘If you like Gilbert and Sullivan, you’ll love this.’ ★★★★★
If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!
The late, great Tom Lehrer, as fanatical a Gilbert and Sullivan fan as ever lived, used to quote these lines to the students to whom he taught maths at the University of California, as a warning against using complicated language when simple language was available. They come from Patience, one of the best and most underestimated of G&S operas, which has the trademark G&S noise and bombast and wordplay, some of their funniest characters, a plot as absurd as any they ever invented, and one of the best patter songs they ever wrote.
It’s being revived in the perfect venue, the lovely, old-fashioned, dilapidated Wiltons Music Hall, by the masters of G&S in small spaces, the Charles Court Opera Company. It’s directed by Charles Court’s talented artistic director John Savournin, who has done more than any other living person to bring G&S to a new generation. The result is the funniest, liveliest, cleverest, most joyful show I’ve seen for years.
There isn’t a weak link in the cast. Matthew Kellett hams up the part of the pretentious poet and aesthete Reginald Bunthorne magnificently – he is never knowingly understated. I don’t believe anyone has ever done the great patter song better, describing his modus operandi:
“You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind./ (The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind).”
Matthew Siveter is wonderfully vain, handsome, narcissistic Archibald Grosvenor – “a trustee of my beauty” as he puts it – who naturally has to get the girl, Patience (Catriona Hewitson - tuneful and eager and heartwarming and absurd, describing herself as “plain, homely, unattractive.”) Bunthorne’s three female admirers, played by Meriel Cunningham, Jennie Jacobs and Catrine Kirkman, are melancholy, predatory, and hysterically funny – by the end of the show, one of them had only to walk on stage to have the audience laughing. Their three suitors - whom we first meet in soldiers’ uniforms – are easy prey, and in the end, when they appear in what they think is casual clothing, utterly absurd, and Matthew Palmer, David Menezes and Dominic Bowe almost manage the impossible feat of making them believable.
With Savournin directing, there are bound to be some clever and amusing dance routines. Musical accompaniment by David Eaton is what it should be - minimal, a background to the words and the singing. But the set, for me, was the star of the show. In a small theatre, and with very limited funds, it posed a problem for designer Simon Bejer, which he solved magnificently. An ordinary bar sits at the back of the stage, authentic, as he says, “down to the smallest detail” – but the cleverness lies in the fact that it’s on a raised portion at the back of the stage. When the action moves to the area in front of it, we can see they have left the bar.
The simplicity of the bar contrasts, as Bejer writes, with the vanity and absurdity of the clothes worn by Bunthorne and his three admirers. I am not sure I would have realised, if it wasn’t it the programme, that this was goth-inspired, but it’s magnificently over the top.
If you like G&S, you’ll love this. If you don’t, give it a try anyway – it’s a production that could worm its way into your heart.
Photography: Craig Fuller
WILTON’S MUSIC HALL
PERFORMANCES
TUESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER to SATURDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2025
Tue - Sat 7:00PM / Thurs & Sat matinee 2:00PM
TICKETS
£10 – £28
BOX OFFICE
020 7702 2789
and online at https://www.wiltons.org.uk
Director: John Savournin
Musical Director: David Eaton
Choreographer – Damian Czarnecki
Designer Simon Bejer
Lighting Designer: Aaron J Dootson
CAST
Catriona Hewitson, Jennie Jacobs, Catrine Kirkman, David Menezes, Matthew Siveter, Matthew Palm, Matthew Kellett, Meriel Cunningham, Dominic Bowe
