Nottingham Playhouse
Assistant MD/Pianist
Still based in Derby, and still seeking work locally, I was grateful to bag this job as MD Ian Smith’s assistant and second keyboard on this production of The Gondoliers. As a Gilbert and Sullivan aficionado, I knew the piece very well. In fact, I’d sung in a Redbridge Music School production of it when I was 17 or so.
The first half of the show, set in Venice, found Ian and me playing the standard two-piano arrangement of the score to accompany the singers. For the second half, set in the imaginary kingdom of Barataria, the music, in the spirit of the famous Joe Papp/Wilfred Leach 1981 revival of The Pirates of Penzance, leaned in the direction of rock. Ian moved on to an electric piano, I to a synthesiser, and we were joined by a drummer and an electric bassist. The production, directed by Richard Digby-Day, played for a month at Nottingham Playhouse, and then moved up to Sheffield, where we performed in a tent in a park.
