Patience is Almost Here!

The opening night is drawing near and there is a palpable focus (or is it panic!) in rehearsals, as for the 23rd year of its existence the Radyr Parish Music Group gets ready to apply the greasepaint, don the costumes and tread the boards.

This year the residents of Radyr and Morganstown are in for a real treat – the cymbals sound, and horns blast as your neighbours appear as you have never seen them before – willing victims of aesthetic transfiguration! Flowing locks, gowns, and lilies abound – and the women are even more outrageous!

‘Patience’ is one of the most under-rated but charming of Gilbert and Sullivan’s long line of operettas. It satirises a late Victorian fad of recreating Medieval romance and art (think of the interior decoration of Cardiff Castle!) so it has a marvellous array of wildly flamboyant poets, swooning maidens, dragoon guards and Patience – the milkmaid who, through her rustic simplicity, actually exposes the nonsense of the whole ‘aesthetic’ movement and wins our hearts.

The music ranks with Gilbert and Sullivan’s finest and the humour equally so. From the foot tapping jollity of ‘In that case unprecedented’ to the tear jerking melancholy of ‘I hear the soft note of the echoing voice’, this production has been a treat for all involved in its preparation and hopefully that will show through when it is performed.

Production dates: 21-24 February

Tickets (from £5.50-£7.50) available from Sue Thomas, 1b Heol Isaf, Radyr, Cardiff, CF15 8AF (Tel 029 2031 0894).

For further details see www.music.radyr.org.uk