Doing Our Best to Make Things Jolly

This was my fourth year at the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival. I had been cast as Dick Deadeye in the Savoynet production of Pinafore — a surprising and exciting choice for me. I had gone into the auditions thinking that I’d make a likely Boatswain, with only a pretty outside chance of Captain Corcoron or Sir Joseph. I put in a Deadeye audition with a ‘just in case’ attitude; one time in a hundred, you apply for something you’re pretty sure you won’t get, and then end up with it by some crazy chance.  This was that time for me.  It’s more of a character role, with no arias, but there are a couple of pretty cool bits of singing.  I came to Buxton excited and curious about it.

It took me a while to settle into the role.  The director gave principals a considerable extent of free reign over character decisions, and it took me several days to figure out what Deadeye is thinking about, what’s important to him, how he moves, how he interacts with the other crew, etc. (Several days is a long time in Buxton-time; we’re rehearsing eight-hour days, and we only have eight of them; we show up off-book and piece the show together very quickly.  So when I say I took several days to get into Deadeye, I mean I didn’t do so until a couple of days before closing night, which is also opening night.) My Deadeye was a bit of an unusual one; more misfit than threatening. I’m younger than the usual DD, and average-sized — I usually think of Deadeye as being a large man, although not everyone I’ve spoken to agrees.

I decided to make him less threatening and nasty, and more awkward and outcast. I think this helps to bring out some of the humor in the role — it emphasizes how arbitrarily his shipmates shun him and his ideas. I think that Dick Deadeye is one of Gilbert’s more interesting ideas — in all three of his Act I dialogues, he listens to a conversation, then jumps in to agree with what’s already been said — but of course it sounds so much more shocking from him that everybody shuns him along with the idea.  Here’s the purest distillation of it:

Boatswain:  Ah, my poor lad, you’ve climbed too high: our worthy captain’s child won’t have nothin’ to say to a poor chap like you.  Will she, lads?
All: No, no.
Deadeye: No, no, captains’ daughters don’t marry foremast hands.
All (recoiling from him):  Shame! shame!
Boatswain: Dick Deadeye, them sentiments o’ yourn are a disgrace to our common natur’.

It’s a really neat idea, but I think Gilbert may have been too subtle with it.  Certainly, he did not develop it as much as he might’ve. One might say the same of my performance.

Most of the role sits a little low for me, vocally, but I managed ok. His ensemble work is surprisingly high.

There are some pictures of the production here and here.