Patience

UPDATE: The Durham Savoyards presentation of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Patience,” rescheduled for the Carolina Theatre of Durham on March 26-28, 2021, will now be available online only through the theatre troupe. For more information on how to view the performances in a virtual setting, please visit durhamsavoyards.org.

All those who bought tickets for the in-person performances, which were first scheduled for March 27-29, 2020, will have their purchases refunded through their original point of purchase. Anyone who has not had their purchase refunded by April 3, 2021 should contact their original point of purchase. If you purchased tickets online, please call Ticketmaster at 1-800-653-8000. If you purchased from the Carolina Theatre Box Office, please email efan@carolinatheatre.org.

The Carolina Theatre of Durham apologizes for any inconvenience this schedule change may cause. We look forward to welcoming the Durham Savoyards back to Fletcher Hall March 25-27, 2022, when they are scheduled to present “The Pirates of Penzance.” Performance and on sale dates for that production will be announced later this year.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Patience”

A poetical, aesthetical, comic operettical

The Durham Savoyards, Ltd. will present W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s “Patience”, a musical in two acts. The Artistic Director is Derrick Ivey and the Musical Director is Joanna Sisk-Purvis.

When it premiered in 1881 “Patience” enjoyed what was then the longest initial run of any G&S operetta (later surpassed only by “The Mikado”). When the production moved to the newly-built Savoy Theatre it went down in history as the first theater performance to be lit entirely with electrical lights.

While the story was originally set during the Aesthetic Movement in Victorian England, its themes of fleeting fashion, fads, and shallow fame are grounded in perennial human foibles that are always ripe for satire. Our updated staging transports Gilbert and Sullivan’s rival poets into the mid twentieth century where Beatnik Bunthorne vies with Hippie Grosvenor for the affections of wholesome milk maid Patience. Will Patience succumb to Bunthorne’s urban pseudo-sophistication? Or will Grosvenor’s mellow flower-child grooviness win her over? And what of ever-faithful but oft ignored Lady Jane? Or the throng of fickle groupies and their less-than-hip suitors?

Join us for a fun-filled romp as we cut through posturing, preening, and bad poetry in search of true love!