On Sunday, March 20, The Victoria Gilbert & Sullivan Society returned to live performances with their Spring Concert, their first public show since COVID-19 hit. You could feel, hear, and see the excitement of the quartet when they started the revue.
The Spring Concert contained material from various other performances, a sort of greatest hits of Gilbert & Sullivan. It was refreshing to see them walk in in Victorian costumes, and it did the trick: I immediately felt set back in time. The whole church setting felt a bit odd at first, but if we think of it as a gathering place it fits the theme.
Soprano Inge Ilman has a wonderful voice and it makes your mood swing. All the singers also do a little performing on the stage. The piano playing by Robert Jan Dukarm is extraordinary and as baritone/narrator Adrian Sly said at the end of the night, Dukarm is making it sound easy when it’s not easy to play, at all.
The whole hour felt like a lullaby with entertaining, mostly cheerful, pieces, which went just perfect with their spring theme. While I was hoping for some Victoria Symphony members to join them, as this is who the Society usually performs with, the whole revue is pretty entertaining.
In the hour-long performance, they managed to sing 15 different pieces, mostly by Gilbert & Sullivan, but they also touched on the work of Jacques Offenbach. Sequences of singing and acting were followed by narrations about the following pieces, which made it easy to follow through and also connects the pieces in a nice way.
It was such a different way to spend an afternoon after the total theatre and concert hiatus we all had to go through the last couple of years. It’s a good, easy way to spend a Sunday, to maybe further your art education and to see where a concert can go if it’s not rock or pop.
It’s not as boring as it would be in an opera house, for sure. Opera houses are usually hard to stay awake in if you’re not a hardcore opera fan. These pieces are operettas and way more cheerful, and it’s easy for the casual listener to follow along.
The voices are clear, and the female voices especially were a joy to listen to. The audience was applauding loudly and even gave some standing ovations at the end, which is always a good sign for a show.
This was well done and hopefully the Gilbert & Sullivan Society will return with their Broadway pieces this summer, as I would like to see more voices and instruments up on the stage next time. It’s worth checking this out next Sunday, as we, hopefully, slide into a summer full of theatre and shows as life used to be.
The next Spring Concert will be on Sunday, March 27 at 2 pm in St. Mary’s Church, located at 1701 Elgin Street. Tickets are $20; see gilbertandsullivanvictoria.ca for more details.