|
Patter of musical feet
- Alistair Donkin
|
|
|
|
Having left his job as a
solicitor to become a professional director of amateur productions,
Alistair Donkin is finding himself in great demand, writes Susan Elkin |
|
Last month I marvelled
at the high standard of Cambridge Operatic Society’s HMS Pinafore.
Accountants, teachers, wine merchants, statisticians and academics they
may be by day but, by night, David Gower as Captain Corcoran, Patrick
O’Brien’s Sir Joseph Porter, Liz Brinsdon as Josephine and the rest
had been directed by someone with a long professional pedigree. |
|
They had. It was
Alistair Donkin. He’s a former D’Oyly Carte patter man who was
appointed as second understudy to the legendary John Reed in 1979 and
remained with the company until its closure in 1982. He trained and
practised as a solicitor. Finally he succumbed to the hobby and gave up
the day job when he found himself working all day on harrowing
child-abuse cases and singing lead roles in three different one-week
shows in different towns in just over a month. |
|
I caught up with him
entertaining a full house at the Barbican in a Raymond Gubbay concert on
New Year’s Eve, with a company of former D’Oyly Carte colleagues.
Rich-voiced and rubber-bodied with precisely sharp diction, Donkin is an
outstanding exponent of The Major General’s song, the Lord
Chancellor’s nightmare and the other familiar favourites. |
|
“I have a dual career
now,” he told me, mentioning guest roles with Welsh National Opera and
ENO among others. “I still perform, as you’ve seen, but I earn 90
per cent of my income from guest-directing NODA affiliated societies all
over the UK and, for 28 years now, annually for the Gilbert and Sullivan
Society at Houston, Texas. |
|
Patter man to his
toe-tips, Donkin is a fast and furious talker off-stage as well as on.
He reels off his directing credits in Britain which include amateur
societies in Stafford, Taunton, Dee and Alyn, Harrogate, Sale,
Barnstaple and Stoke-on-Trent as well as Cambridge where he’s booked
for Ruddigore in the run up to Christmas later this year. He also
directs a production at the international festival at Buxton each year,
working with ‘enthusiastic amateurs’ to mount a show in six days. |
|
What about quality
control, I ask as tactfully as I can. Is there a talent level below
which he will not take a company on? “No, it’s self-regulating,”
he says. “It’s quite expensive for a group to buy me for four weeks.
It’s only the companies which have got plenty about them and which
want high standards which can fund a professional director.” |
|
For a whole month he
moves to the town or area the company is based in so, unless the job is
within striking distance of his Shropshire home, there are accommodation
costs as well. “Then we rehearse every night, rotating principals’
sessions with chorus work and staging sections of the piece.” As part
of the deal, he also undertakes anything local which promotes the
production such as radio interviews or school workshops. |
|
He admires amateurs.
“They do it, literally, for the love of it,” says Donkin, whose
directing now goes beyond G&S to shows like My Fair Lady, Kismet and
Fiddler in the Roof, along with operettas such as Die Fledermaus and La
Belle Helene. “They have already worked all day at something else when
they arrive at the rehearsal. No professional would put up with a
three-session day for long. They bring masses of energy.” |
|
He adds that he is
always careful to keep everyone busy and active at rehearsals. “If you
keep people waiting around for their bit they won’t bother, juggling
their commitments as they must, to get to tomorrow’s rehearsal on
time.” He also argues that rehearsals must be fun and that means a lot
of laughter. |
|
Some amateurs, of
course, have inborn professional savoir faire. Donkin tells me a
hilarious story about a production of The Gondoliers in the south west. |
|
The Duchess was a large,
Jessye Norman-esque, woman. Clad in crinoline, layers of frills and
voluminous knickers she got stuck in the gondola on her first
appearance, trapping Luis and Casilda, helplessly behind her. Her duke,
a suitably diminutive figure, marched towards the audience to sing his
first line. She added her line in cue, horizontal in her frills.
Eventually, free on stage and thinking fast, she berated the negligent
Duke crossly with her parasol at every opportunity for the rest of the
number. |
|
A bemused Donkin,
meanwhile, was in the audience which was rocking with laughter at such
original stage business. The production won the South West NODA award
for excellence. His productions of the Pirates of Penzance and Iolanthe
won the same accolades in different years too. |
|
His work often wins
prizes. Three times he has taken the best director’s trophy home from
Buxton, for example. His Houston production of the Mikado earned them
the title of International Champions and his Yeoman of the Guard with
Taunton Operatic Society won the Bristol Evening Post’s Rose Bowl
award for the best production in the south west. |
|
The Donkin secret seems
to be an electric combination of tradition and freshness. The HMS
Pinafore which I enjoyed so much in Cambridge, for example, gave us
seven - yes seven - encores for Never Mind the Whys and Wherefores, many
of them almost exactly as WS Gilbert set them down. But since so few
directors now do encores at all, it seemed almost innovative. |
|
On the other hand he
argues that these lovely little works are not museum pieces and that
it’s a mistake to be too pure. “Their creators meant them to be
living theatre,” he points out. Although Donkin won’t change WS
Gilbert’s words, he encourages actors to ham up the sillier bits and
does his own thing with staging. |
|
|
|
