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One of our more ambitious productions!

Thespis was the first collaboration of Gilbert & Sullivan, written as the Christmas pantomime for the Gaiety Theatre in 1871.  Because the whole style was totally different from anything they wrote later, both men did their best to forget it in later years, and Sullivan often claimed to have used up all the music in other things.  Certainly the score has largely disappeared, and over the years there have been at least 23 reconstructions or new settings.  Our performance was preceded by a talk given by Selwyn, explaining how he and Rod Spencer have based their new version largely on The Pirates of Penzance, and showing how very possibly that's where to look for some of the original Thespis music. 

The text of that talk is available by clicking here.  It is saved in .pdf format, which can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat Reader.  If you don't have this software, it can generally be found on CD-Roms on the covers of computer magazines; or can be downloaded from the Adobe site.  Please note that the file is large (about 1.5MB), which will take a little while to download on a dial-up modem.

Click here for more photographs, and for reviews of the performance.

The cast at the end of four days' rehearsal

Back row: Ellis C Pike, Melanie Short, Leon Berger, Chris Gutteridge, Selwyn Tillett
Middle row: Liz Menezes, David Menezes, Cassie Tillett
Front row: Camilla Cutts, Zoe White