Stephen Turnbull, one of the Festival adjudicator, wrote:

5 August: DAY FIVE: Assist me, all of you!

It’s a good job that the church and the stage are closely connected. Among the advantages it brings is the facility to put on operas in church buildings. St. John’s church in Buxton, which hosts many of the Festival’s daytime events – recitals, talks etc. – isn’t the perfect operatic stage, but with its wide crossing area at the head of the nave, it is certainly a serviceable one, and today’s performance by Dunfermline G&SS of their new show The Jury’s Out fitted in quite well.

We often hear bandied about the expression “a game of two halves’, and it rather nicely fits The Jury’s Out, by Linda D Milne. The first act is completely new work in which the backstories of Sally and Richard, plaintiff and defendant, are explored by means of newly written dialogue by Linda, and songs, with words amended as appropriate, repurposed from a raft of G&S operas. The second is an adapted version of Trial by Jury, in which the dilemmas created are resolved by legal means, in a way that differs slightly from the conventional TbJ dénoument (no spoilers!) One particularly felicitous touch is the introduction of a Counsel for the Defendant, his bosom friend in Act I, who takes some of the Defendant’s verses in Act II, singing them in the third person.

The show was successfully premièred last year in Dunfermline’s Carnegie Hall and there have been several subsequent performances. This is Dunfermline G&S Society’s first visit to Buxton and The Jury’s Out thus received its English première. It’s an attractive show, eminently stageworthy, and enough happens in the first act to hold the interest. There’s plenty for the chorus to do, and all the music used is mainstream. There was some good chorus work, and several of the principals were excellent. Movement was somewhat limited by the performance space, but several entrances from the back of the church added a dimension.

I’m sure that the biggest challenge for the cast would have been to unlearn the original words in favour of the new ones. A version of that problem affects members of the Inner Brotherhood. I found it quite difficult, when a number was under way, to divorce it in my mind from its home context. But that, of course, would not be an issue for members of a general audience. Today there was a good house – nave and coffee area practically full – and they received the new work with warmth and enthusiasm.

The honorary President of Dunfermline G&SS is Frances McCafferty, and it was an absolute delight to see her enter regally as Katisha and proceed to electrify the room with those parts of the original Katisha’s role that this new Katisha was required to sing.

Hopefully you’ll have read our post on The Road to Buxton, but there’s a lot to tell, which we’ve split into a number of separate pages.

The show as presented in a semi-staged version is told (with pictures) at this link.

What a professional reviewer thought of the show is at this link.

We tell the story of a typical Buxton day at this link.

Mostly for those who were there, the long Fringe Festival wait is described at this link.

Because posts are ephemeral, your webmaster has started an Archive page linked to our Previous Shows page.  As always this is a work in progress, so please email your webmaster if you have material to share or comments/corrections to make. Particularly useful are corrections or reflections on the captions to the slides!

Rehearsals for The Gondoliers will start on Wednesday 26 August 2026 at Limekilns Parish Church. 7.00pm: social catch-up/meeting new members time; start singing around 7.30pm. Chorus will rehearse at 7.30pm on subsequent weeks. Principals will rehearse 6.30pm–7.30pm too each week as agreed with Linda/Eddie.

Please let anyone you think might like to try us out know about the rehearsal date/time – as always new and returning members will be most welcome. Vocal scores for The Gondoliers will be available to borrow, and we also have rehearsal tracks available for chorus members. Let Ellen know if you would like the appropriate track for your voice emailed to you.

Everyone in the Society was saddened by the news of the death of Lyn Bowring on 14 July. Lyn was a huge part of DGASS over many, many years and supported the Society both on and off the stage.

Lyn’s funeral on 3 August was taken by another DGASS stalwart, Mary Kidd, and her eulogy can be read or downloaded at this link. As many members were in or en route to Buxton on that day, so could not attend Lyn’s funeral, we marked her passing after our performance in St John’s on Wednesday 5 August by singing “Hail Poetry” in her memory.

Our thoughts are with Steve and Alayne Bowring at this sad time.

You’ll see that the New Show page now has an Auditions page, inviting you to contact Ellen and book a slot to audition for our next show. Our next show is The Gondoliers, a perennial favourite, but amazingly an opera we last performed back in 2015.

As with the last three productions, we are promised a rather different take on the way that the story is presented, and all we know so far is that the action will take place in the 1920s. But now is the time for those who fancy a principal role to put themselves forward … Wednesday 20 May and Sunday 24 May are the current slots, but don’t hesitate to express an interest if you would dearly love to perform with your favourite G&S Society and can’t make those dates. Above all, please don’t wait until the end of May and echo the Sergeant of Police: “It’s too late now … you should’ve thought of that afore!”

… The Gondoliers. At the EGM held on Wednesday 25 March, members approved the committee’s proposal for the 2027 show. Linda Milne will be the director, and Eddie MacLennan will be the MD.

We hope to have details about audition pieces and dates soon, so watch this page! And, of course, encourage would-be chorus participants, in the full knowledge that this will be another fun show to take part in, as were The Jury’s Out and Strictly Patience.

Good news from our friends in the Kirkcaldy Orchestral Society … plus a call to action!

The Royal Philharmonic Society annual awards recognise star musicians, ensembles, and ventures in classical music “lifting hearts and minds across the nation”. Among these, the RPS Inspiration Award is specially presented to non-professional ensembles, “recognising local heroes who do so much year-round to bring people together through music”, and the winner is unusual in being chosen by public vote … which is where you come in, because KOS are on the short-list of four, and the only one of the four in Scotland! Click the image to see the good things that RPS has to say about KOS.

Please vote for KOS at this link, and pass this on the message to anyone else who might like to support KOS.  Voting closes at 11am on Monday 2 February 2026 and the winner will be revealed at the 2026 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards on Thursday 12 March.