Word: savoyards
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fully open to my awful situation") is faster and perhaps more tongue-twisting; but the Lord Chancellor's song is the Moby Dick of patter songs, the masterpiece all the rest led up to or away from. Singing the Lord Chancellor's song is the equivalent, for a Savoyard, of Hamlet or Lear for a Shakespearean. The lyrics are a juxtaposition of complete irreverence ("the black silk with gold clocks") with a sense of heightened reality and absurdity characteristic of real nightmares...
Unlike some of the other members of the cast, the Lord Chancellor (Dennis Crowley) is at his best in the dialogue sections--his voice clear, sardonic and genuinely Gilbertian. He catches the verbal nuances with the skill of a born Savoyard and manages to be not only a buffoon and a figure of pathos, but, when necessary, a commanding Lord in his own right. The only flaw in Crowley's performance is that his voice is not quite as strong as it might be--never powerful enough to belt out a line that needs belting out. Nonetheless, he traverses...