Alton Operatic and Dramatic Society
The Yeomen of the Guard
by W S Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan
Alton Assembly Rooms
Tuesday 9th to Saturday 13th March
Evenings - 7.30  Saturday Matinee - 2.30

As the story of the jester who has to keep making people laugh while his own life is falling apart this is Gilbert at his most poignantly autobiographical, and the music is Sullivan at his liveliest, most lyrical and most grandly operatic.  That is why many people think it is the best 'G&S' of all.  Don't miss it!

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Tickets now on sale from the  Newbury Building Society, Alton High Street
or Telephone Tony Samuel on 01420 84275

The Yeomen of the Guard is proving exceptionally rewarding to rehearse. This is because it contains some of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s most beautiful music and because the story combines such an extraordinary mixture of high comedy, romance tinged with dramatic irony, and almost heartbreaking tragedy. It is uplifting to see the noble Fairfax saved by his friends from a dastardly sentence of death. At the same time the story of Jack Point the jester, who must go on being funny even when he is losing the love of his life, is said to be Gilbert at his most autobiographical. Into this pot is thrown the sub-optimal romances between winsome Phoebe and Wilfred, the thick jailer who thinks he could be a jester too, and between Sergeant Meryll of the Yeomen of the Guard and the bloodthirsty Dame Carruthers, Housekeeper to the Tower.

But there is serious stuff behind the slapstick. As Gilbert famously gave Jack Point to sing, ‘Winnow all my folly, folly, folly and you’ll find a grain or two of truth among the chaff’.