The Theatre: Gilbert & Sullivan

As the little steamer brought him into New York Harbor one July day in 1879, Richard D’Oyly Carte nervously paced the narrow deck with many a grave misgiving. H. M. S. Pinafore, of which he was impresario, was being widely pirated in the U. S. Without recourse to any international copyright law, he was determined to give Manhattan a production of H. M. S. Pinafore which would rout his unscrupulous competitors. Then he was to plunge into rehearsals for the premiere of The Pirates of Penzance, whose production was impeded at the start by the absentmindedness of pious Arthur Sullivan. In his haste to make a later boat, Composer Sullivan had left behind in his London flat the entire score for Act I.

The temperaments of his composer and his ebullient librettist, William Schwenck Gilbert, were the greatest burdens of Manager Carte’s harassed life. He had brought them together four years before, had helped them make the biggest names in Victorian theatrical history. But all his vast reserves of tact and persuasion could not prevent the immensely successful but entirely antipodal collaborators from a ruinous breach over £140 worth of carpet eleven years later.

Last week another boat hove into New York and another D’Oyly Carte shared a 55-year-old apprehension. Unlike his father, however, Rupert D’Oyly Carte remained in London, while the 54 members of the venerable D’Oyly Carte Opera Company made their first appearance in Manhattan. By the divine right of apostolic succession, the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company is to Gilbert & Sullivan what Comedie Franchise is to Moliere, what Bayreuth is to Wagner, what the Moscow Art Theatre is to Chekov, what the Abbey Theatre is to Synge. But any number of things could turn the Savoyards’ invasion of New York into a hopeless dispersion: overbilling, overconfidence or just plain cussedness on the part of U. S. critics and spectators.

None of these unhappy possibilities occurred. When the week ended, audiences’ palms were red and sore and every critical cap was high in the air. Son, like Father D’Oyly Carte, could count New York his.

The twelve-week repertory began with The Gondoliers. Confirmed Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiasts, most of whom seem to emerge from the suburbs only when their favorites are produced, did not need to be told the story of the two boatmen who became the extremely democratic but temporary Kings of Barataria. They were not surprised when the rightful heir turned up, but they were mightily surprised and mightily pleased at the amazing finesse of the company. Nothing like it had been seen on Broadway since the Gilbert & Sullivan revivals of Winthrop Ames in 1926. There was life and spontaneity in the D’Oyly Carte troupe, tradition without staleness, sensitivity without clowning. Nor did perfect teamwork subordinate individual talent. Martyn Green was marvelously mincing as the Duke of Plaza Toro (“His place was at the fore, O” when his troops retreated). Sydney Granville’s Grand Inquisitor was played to the very depths of philosophical pompousness (“When everyone is somebodee, then no one’s anybody”). As one of the gondoliers, Derek Oldham made most U. S. radio crooners sound like old clothes peddlers when he sang the lovely “Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes.” Equally well-dressed, admirably performed was The Pirates, billed for the rest of the first week.

For Gilbert & Sullivan, Richard D’Oyly Carte built the Savoy Theatre in 1881. It was the first in London to have electric lights. There has never been a lapse in production. The musicians have access to the original scores by Sullivan. The actors have preserved, every bit of “business” Gilbert invented. There have been no interpolations, no innovations. Actors are recruited young from the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music. Guild”-hall School of Music, trained in the chorus, graduated to parts. They play 48 weeks a year, 14 to 20 in London, the rest in the provinces. In 1926 the company went out of the country for the first time when it toured Canada. Two years later came another Canadian tour, with a short swing through the western U. S.

Rupert D’Oyly Carte, 57, oversees but does not meddle in the company’s activi ties. That is left to a man even more directly connected with the past. Stage Di rector James McRobie Gordon, a member of the original Patience company. Mr. Carte, small and self-effacing, concerns himself with other phases of his inheri tance. His father, as shrewd a real-estate man as a producer, left him controlling interests in London’s Savoy, Berkeley and New Claridge Hotels as well as the swank Simpson Restaurant on the Strand. Son Rupert spends much of his time with his 14 assorted dogs in Devonshire.