READING based performance group Mostly Gilbert & Sullivan says tickets are now on sale for its next show.
As its name suggests, the group places special emphasis on the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, but is also interested in performing music by other composers.
It has developed a style of performing semi-staged concert versions of shows that it says conveys the story while allowing the music to shine.
Mostly G&S’s next show is Patience: or Bunthorne’s Bride, a comic story that pokes fun at the way we, and those around us, can easily become consumed by the latest fad to the exclusion of all else.
This behaviour is parodied by Gilbert & Sullivan in the pair’s sixth opera – Patience.
The object of their comic finger pointing back in the 1880s was the Aesthetic Movement, led by Swinburne, Whistler and Wilde, which displayed outrageous excesses and fickle changes of loyalty – attitudes not unknown today.
The story concerns the rivalry of Reginald Bunthorne (a Fleshly poet) and Archibald Grosvenor (an Idyllic poet), both of whom are pursuing local milkmaid Patience.
She is the one clear-sighted person in the story, and her simple truthful remarks highlight the folly of the extreme behaviour on display.
Bunthorne needs to take a bride, but his efforts are thwarted by a tangled plot of instantly swapped affections and engagements, .
To find out who will win his affections, and for a night of sharp satire, catchy melodies and bouncing rhythms, audiences should make their way to Woodley.
Patience will be performed at The Oakwood Centre, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, November 13, 14, and 15, at 7.30pm.
Tickets cost £17 (plus £2.50 booking fee if purchased online)
For tickets and information, visit: ticketsource.co.uk/mostlygs, email: mostlygandsboxoffice@gmail.com, call: 07514 423894, or log onto: mostlygands.co.uk.