The talented and professionally-trained actors of the Barrow Savoyards took on the classic satirical opera Patience or Bunthorne’s Bride in a memorable 1989 production. Performed in February that year at the Civic Hall, the show is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. ACT: The cast of Patience performed by the Barrow Savoyards pictured in 1989 The opera is a satire on the aesthetic movement of the 1870s and 1880s in England. The starring roles went to David Marcus as the titular Reginald Bunthorne, Eileen Lithgow as Patience, and Neil Metcalfe as Archibald Grosvenor.
The early part of the year is often a time when Furness has witnessed some very wintry conditions. On February 23, 1994, the Furness peninsula and Millom were cut off as driving snow blocked road and rail links with the rest of Britain. TOPPED OFF: Stephanie and Robert Blackburn, aged three, with their snowman Sammy in Barrow in February 1994 Roads to the Dalton bypass became blocked by abandoned vehicles and the A590 link with the M6 was closed at Newby Bridge. The A595 was impassable for the whole of its length, from Greenodd to Ravenglass. Millom was snowed in when roads from The Green and Silecroft became too dangerous to travel.
THE Barrow Savoyards were all set to launch their shipshape and Bristol-fashion production of HMS Pineaford at the Coronation hall in 1990. David Marcus directed the offering of Gillbert and Sullivan and played First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Joseph Porter KCB. “Pineaford is a skit at the British class structure” he said. “We will be stressing the point that he got his job due to his rise through the civil service and knows nothing whatever about the sea. “We shall be getting a lot of fun out of this.” The show began at 7:30pm and would run nightly that week up until the Saturday.