Six months earlier, English Touring Opera's annual visit to Perth had shown how well Fledermaus can be performed with a small budget. Tayside had not tackled operetta before, such works being left to the other local groups. But the trend among those companies was to move away from classic operetta, including Gilbert and Sullivan. Instead these groups were performing musicals, including rock musicals, invariably with heavy amplification. So the opportunity was there for Tayside to try out this area of the repertoire, and they did so with great success.
Firstly the hazard presented by the casting of the role of Frosch was met head on, and worked triumphantly. The Perth comedian and broadcaster Fred Macaulay was an ideal exponent. As with Scottish Opera's memorable engagement of Billy Connolly some years before, he struck just the right balance between improvisation and disciplined adherence to tradition. The audience was on his wavelength right from his opening line.
As for the rest of the cast, they worked together well. The new lead tenor, Paul Featherstone, as Eisenstein, was working with Scottish Opera. He had an excellent lyrical tenor, beautifully phrased. If anything more important was his superb sense of comic timing for the dialogue. He had started his career as a straight actor, and his engagements had included a period at Dundee Rep, a highlight of which was the character of Algernon Moncrieff in two plays alternating - not just The Importance of Being Earnest, but also Tom Stoppard's Travesties. The company was luckily able to lure him back for a couple of Verdi roles, admittedly rather less comic.
Further details to be confirmed.
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