OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 21 July 2012

SKYE-BASED Inner Sound Operatic Society represents a labour of love by retired voice teacher Ann Lampard and her collaborators.

SINGERS of all ages spend three months rehearsing for just four performances of a Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera including, for the past four years, a night at Eden Court. This year’s offering was Patience, Gilbert’s good-tempered satire on the late 19th century “aesthetic” movement, the prime examples of which in the UK include Oscar Wilde, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris.

Gilbert and Sullivan

The story centres on the rivalry between Reginald Bunthorne, the ‘Fleshly Poet’ (thought by some to be based on Wilde) and an ‘Idyllic Poet’, Archibald Grosvenor, for the affections of the milkmaid, Patience, and twenty Rapturous Maidens who have overthrown their previous sweethearts, the Dragoon Guards, for the imagined delights of being in love with a poet.

The stage is thus set for Gilbert’s artfully contrived comic shenanigans, Sullivan’s still under-rated music and, eventually, a happy ending. As usual Inner Sound delivered a performance whose energy and enthusiasm overflowed the lack of professionally trained singers.Their untiring costume department dealt ingeniously with the task of dressing a large cast whose ages must have spanned seven or even eight decades, opting for matching dresses, hats and shawls for all the Maidens but allowing them different accessories.

Much of the success of the evening was down to the director’s excellent blocking of movements involving a large number of folk, including children and one person in a wheelchair, on a relatively small stage space. There was also well deserved applause for the deft touch of pianist Elizabeth Shepherd, at one point drawn onto the stage by ‘Lady Jane’ for a piece of stage business involving a cardboard cello. But every member of the company, on and off stage, deserves a bouquet for this irresistibly charming show.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012