Patience
or Bunthorne’s Bride
Alexander Theatre
|
Libretto by W. S. Gilbert
Music by Arthur Sullivan
Director – Robert Ray
Musical Director – Trevor Henley
Ticket prices: $66 / 60
Groups:
Groups of 10 or more people can be booked via the theatre at $60 pp.
Groups of 25 or more can be reserved via tickets@gsov.org.au or call 0490 465 009 at $50 pp.
Subscriptions:
Price of each ticket when purchased as part of a subscription: $56
Subscriptions can be purchased until 1 July 2026: Subscriptions Trybooking link
Featuring Sullivan’s most beautiful music, in the sixth collaboration – and the funniest – Gilbert pits the straight-laced ideals of the Victorian era against the passions and indulgences of the 1870s Aesthetic Movement, and ridicules both!
The rapturous maidens of the village seek beauty and perfect artistic expression and spurn their confused (and decidedly non-poetic) military suitors for Reginald Bunthorne, a moody and handsome poet. However, Bunthorne only has eyes for the simple milkmaid, Patience. The problem? Bunthorne’s artistic ways are all just an act to attract women to him – he doesn’t even really like poetry! Besides, Patience is in love with her childhood sweetheart, Archibald Grosvenor, who really is a poet, but she feels she cannot marry him because he is too perfect. How will this conundrum resolve?
Patience opened on April 23, 1881 at the Opera Comique and ran for 578 performances, moving on October 10, 1881 to D’Oyly Carte’s new theatre, the Savoy, the first theatre in the world to be lit entirely by electric lights.