Review: TARANTARA TARANTARA at ARTS Theatre

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Saturday April 30th 2022.

Tarantara Tarantara is a show with its own built-in fanfare. For decades, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of South Australia has presented many productions of the entire G and S canon, bar one, The Grand Duke. It is strange that their most impeccable production in all that time isn't by G and S. It's about them.

Ian Taylor created this musical biography of that most enterprising duo, the wordsmith, Gilbert, and the composer, Sullivan. One was already popular as a comic dramatist and versifier. The other was better known as a composer in the classical European mode. Indeed, Sullivan, throughout the partnership, felt he was slumming and ignoring his responsibilities for the improvement of music in the British Isles. He needed the money. The third member of the duo was the canny entrepreneur, Richard D'Oyly Carte, whose nickname, Oily Carte, gives you some sense of his reputation.

The story is enlivened with ballads, songs, and snatches from the shows, beautifully done and tantalising, and takes place on a superb set by Vanessa Lee Shirley and Tim de Jong. The cast is dressed with classic style from the wardrobe resources that the company has developed over the years. Christine Hodgen accompanies stylishly from the almost off-stage piano. Now to the cast. At one point, early in their partnership, Gilbert explains to D'Oyly Carte that he doesn't want established performers but amateurs he can lick into shape, and that's as clear an explanation of the G and S Society's success as you could hope for. The principals have been nurtured by the company and they repay that investment in spades. Nicholas Bishop is WS Gilbert, having begun his life in the company as George Grossmith in an earlier production, thirty years ago.

Andrew Crispe, as Richard D'oyly Carte, started with them in 2000. Paul Briske, as Sullivan, is new to the company, but the contrast between his on-stage characterisation and his off-stage presence is quite remarkable. The three of them shift in and out of character, taking on multiple roles, and are equally balanced.

The three female principals are led by Hazel Green, whose extensive career with the company goes back decades. Megan Doherty began her time with the company in Iolanthe, twenty years ago, and Vanessa Lee Shirley is a long-standing board member.

While Nicholas Munday doesn't present my idea of George Grossmith, for many years the company's leading comedian, who I've always imagined as short and nippy, he is an elegant performer and appearing in this show only days after his impressive Marius for the Northern Lights Theatre Company, marks him out as a performer to watch. Sharing the stage and the tenor honours is James Nicholson, already an established figure in Adelaide musical theatre. It's nice to have the two of them contributing a strong vocal line in the ensembles. Three new faces appear as the stagehands, adding their presence to the music, Suriya Umapthysivam, Grace Carter, and Anthony Little.

The show owes so much, as indeed does the G and S society, to Richard Trevaskis, whose lifetime's experience on and off stage is key to the success of this show. In my chorus boy days, I was in an independent production of Trial by Jury and he was superb as the Judge. I watch every performance with immense admiration.

The last two collaborations are rarely done, but they are ripe for examination. Utopia Ltd is a satire on the impact of the British way of life on the inhabitants of a Pacific island. The Grand Duke, the one that the G and S company has avoided, focuses on a popular revolution aimed at toppling a despotic ruler. There is a running joke involving a sausage roll. It could easily be staged as if on the centenary of the revolt as though a TV crew was doing a documentary. I'll leave that idea with you.

Photography, Ahsan Qureshi.