The G&S For All Films

In 1972, the group Gilbert and Sullivan For All, with stars Donald Adams and Thomas Round, made a set of eight hour-long G&S educational films. Except for Trial By Jury, which was presented complete, all the operas were drastically cut-down, with linking narration to knit the scenes together. Most of the more-popular operas were included, except for Patience, because it had no role for Round.

The narration seems to have been recorded multiple times. For the PBS broadcasts in the U.S., the narrator was James Stuart, patter baritone with the Ohio Light Opera Company. Pirates was rebroadcast on New York's WNET in the early 1980s with narration by Canadian comics Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster. I have heard, but have not been able to verify, that Wayne and Shuster recorded narration for others of the series, as well. For the U.K. versions, the story teller was either Andrew Faulds or David Doddimead. One correspondent has reported copies narrated by Peter Murray, who was also the G&S For All musical director, but I have not verified this.

The films in their original form have never been released on home video, and they will be largely unfamiliar except to those lucky enough to have seen them on PBS. Recently, Musical Collectables, marketing arm of the annual Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, has acquired rights to the set. They are being re-issued, with new introductions and narration by G&S For All's surviving founder, Thomas Round. The series is being packaged on four 2-hour tapes. I have viewed, Pinafore/ Gondoliers and Yeomen/ Pirates. (Reviews of the others will be posted after I have a look at them.)

The productions, despite being heavily abridged, are beautifully costumed and staged. Business and blocking are in the traditional manner, but do not slavishly reproduce D'Oyly Carte stagings. The choreography could be more ambitious, but what's there is at least adequate. Fifty-something Tom Round's voice is in glorious bloom, and all the others sing well, though the balance between voices is a little off-kilter at times. These films provide rare glimpses of many former D'Oyly Carte stars; for this reason, if no other, they are must-haves. My wife immediatly noticed Valerie Masterson in Pinafore, who she said looks and sounds like a queen.

Unfortunately, the transfers are beset by every imaginable technical problem. The original film stock has not worn well — I am told they used Round's own personal copies — with colors looking like they've been processed through a cobwebby-gray filter. I asked my wife, who didn't know when they were made, how old they looked, and she guessed 1940s.

Tom Round's narration is delivered with enthusiasm, but the constant switching between the video narrations and the film is jarring. Often, Round comes on-screen before the music has stopped, or is left on-screen as the music is starting. Several musical tags are amputated mid-note. There are occasional lip-sync problems and drop-outs. In short, this is not a quality editing job, though perhaps the original materials are so far degraded that no better could be done. There's also lots of flicker while Round speaks — no excuse for this, since the narrations are all new. Possibly this was introduced during the conversion from PAL to NTSC.

Because the productions include only about half of the music, and none of the dialogue, Round comes on-screen after every number, and sometimes even in middle of a number, to explain what's going on in the plot. Although it gets tedious after a while, it clearly has to be done. But, why must he give the story away ahead of time? For example, in The Gondoliers, he tells us that Luiz is the King, just before Inez comes on and makes the disclosure herself.

I never saw the films in their original versions, but I am told that every extant version of the narration suffered from similar flaws, or worse. For example, Savoynetter Arthur Robinson says that the PBS narrations were "interminable, embarrassing, and, as I recall, condescending to G&S (and to the British in general)."

The sound tracks are taken from the group's fine set of stereo recordings dating from 1972, although Belinda Smith, whose father runs Musical Collectables, says that in some cases timings from the recordings didn't track exactly to the film, which would explain the occasional lip-sync problems. In any event, the new transfers present a very poor sound quality, which is inexcusable given the excellent source from which they come.

Of the four released to date, The Gondoliers is perhaps best. As many commentators have observed, this opera has less plot than most, so it suffers least from abridgement. The scenes are colorful, and John Cartier's hen-pecked Duke in the second act is truly memorable. Yeomen, on the other hand, has a very dense plot, and the abridgement here trivializes it out of existence. Pirates suffers from such severe technical degredation that it is practically unwatchable. Pinafore is a must-see for Valerie Masterson's contribution, but is otherwise a bit dull, and the film stock is in poor condition.

Overall, these are videos most G&S fans will want to have, but in such poor condition they are no longer suitable as an introduction to the operas, which ironically was their original purpose.

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