Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [151]
“After the Savoy, I joined the Bohemians, and appeared in a number of their productions, often at the King’s Theatre, again in the chorus. There was The Merry Widow, which I always enjoyed very much, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Porgy and Bess, to name just a few. In Porgy, I was an understudy for one of the principals, but was not called upon to sing. I must admit that it is very difficult not to wish ill on a principal in those circumstances, but I shall never forget the story told me by one of the Bohemians about how, some time ago, he had been an understudy for somebody in Cav and Pag, and had wished that the other singer would fall under a bus. Which he did. I’m not sure which number the bus was, but I think that it might even have been the 23, the bus which goes up Morningside Road. Fortunately, he survived, although one of his legs was broken, and of course the understudy felt so bad about it that he could barely bring himself to sing the part.
“After a break from the Bohemians, I joined the Morningside Grand Opera, an amateur group which put on a range of performances at the Church Hill Theatre each year. They were ambitious and even did Wagner’s Ring Cycle one year, to mixed reviews, but they also did a lot of the old favourites, such as The Gondoliers. And it was in The Gondoliers that I sang my first principal role, that of the Duke of Plaza-Toro.
“It was a wonderful role, and I would have enjoyed it far more than I actually did if the other singers had been slightly stronger than they actually were. Only a day or two before the first night, I could not help but notice that a number of them had not bothered to learn the words correctly, and there was one young man, who sang the part of Luiz, who just sang la, la, la when he came to a bit that he had not learned. And as for the woman who sang the part of the old nurse, she only had two lines to sing (where she reveals that Luiz was really the baby), but she could not even remember those!
The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part VIII – I Play the Duke . . . 319
“The young man who played Luiz was particularly irritating. My feelings over his behaviour became quite strong at an early stage in the rehearsals, when I overheard him saying to one of the gondolieri that he, rather than I, should have been cast as the Duke of Plaza-Toro.
“If the whole idea had not been so laughable I would have remonstrated with him. One needs a certain gravitas to play the Duke of Plaza-Toro, and I had that and he simply did not. I was a WS, after all, and he was not. He was also far younger than I was and it would have been absurd to see him pretending to be the leader of the ducal party.
“But it gets worse than that. He had a most annoying manner, that young man. I expected him to call me Mr Dunbarton (or perhaps ‘Your Grace’ in the circumstances!) but he actually used my first name immediately after we had been introduced. And then he presumed to shorten it, and began to refer to me as
‘Ramps’. That was almost unbearable, particularly when he turned to me at one point in a rehearsal and said ‘That’s a B-flat by the way, Ramps!’
“I must also admit my doubts as to the casting of the Duchess. The woman who had the part was very friendly with the producer. I shall say no more about that. However, I did feel that a more appropriate person might have been cast in that role. In particular, there was somebody in the chorus who had been Head Girl many years before of the Mary Erskine School for Girls, when it used to be in Queen Street, where it had that wonderful roof garden for the girls to play on. That sort of background would have equipped her very well to play the role of the Duchess of Plaza-Toro, but do you think that the producer took that into account for