Patter of musical feet - Alistair Donkin

Published Friday 13 January 2006 at 12:00 by Susan Elkin

Having left his job as a solicitor to become a professional director of amateur productions, Alistair Donkin is finding himself in great demand, writes Susan Elkin

Last month I marvelled at the high standard of Cambridge Operatic Society’s HMS Pinafore. Accountants, teachers, wine merchants, statisticians and academics they may be by day but, by night, David Gower as Captain Corcoran, Patrick O’Brien’s Sir Joseph Porter, Liz Brinsdon as Josephine and the rest had been directed by someone with a long professional pedigree.

They had. It was Alistair Donkin. He’s a former D’Oyly Carte patter man who was appointed as second understudy to the legendary John Reed in 1979 and remained with the company until its closure in 1982. He trained and practised as a solicitor. Finally he succumbed to the hobby and gave up the day job when he found himself working all day on harrowing child-abuse cases and singing lead roles in three different one-week shows in different towns in just over a month.

I caught up with him entertaining a full house at the Barbican in a Raymond Gubbay concert on New Year’s Eve, with a company of former D’Oyly Carte colleagues. Rich-voiced and rubber-bodied with precisely sharp diction, Donkin is an outstanding exponent of The Major General’s song, the Lord Chancellor’s nightmare and the other familiar favourites.

“I have a dual career now,” he told me, mentioning guest roles with Welsh National Opera and ENO among others. “I still perform, as you’ve seen, but I earn 90 per cent of my income from guest-directing NODA affiliated societies all over the UK and, for 28 years now, annually for the Gilbert and Sullivan Society at Houston, Texas.

Patter man to his toe-tips, Donkin is a fast and furious talker off-stage as well as on. He reels off his directing credits in Britain which include amateur societies in Stafford, Taunton, Dee and Alyn, Harrogate, Sale, Barnstaple and Stoke-on-Trent as well as Cambridge where he’s booked for Ruddigore in the run up to Christmas later this year. He also directs a production at the international festival at Buxton each year, working with ‘enthusiastic amateurs’ to mount a show in six days.

What about quality control, I ask as tactfully as I can. Is there a talent level below which he will not take a company on? “No, it’s self-regulating,” he says. “It’s quite expensive for a group to buy me for four weeks. It’s only the companies which have got plenty about them and which want high standards which can fund a professional director.”

For a whole month he moves to the town or area the company is based in so, unless the job is within striking distance of his Shropshire home, there are accommodation costs as well. “Then we rehearse every night, rotating principals’ sessions with chorus work and staging sections of the piece.” As part of the deal, he also undertakes anything local which promotes the production such as radio interviews or school workshops.

He admires amateurs. “They do it, literally, for the love of it,” says Donkin, whose directing now goes beyond G&S to shows like My Fair Lady, Kismet and Fiddler in the Roof, along with operettas such as Die Fledermaus and La Belle Helene. “They have already worked all day at something else when they arrive at the rehearsal. No professional would put up with a three-session day for long. They bring masses of energy.”

He adds that he is always careful to keep everyone busy and active at rehearsals. “If you keep people waiting around for their bit they won’t bother, juggling their commitments as they must, to get to tomorrow’s rehearsal on time.” He also argues that rehearsals must be fun and that means a lot of laughter.

Some amateurs, of course, have inborn professional savoir faire. Donkin tells me a hilarious story about a production of The Gondoliers in the south west.

The Duchess was a large, Jessye Norman-esque, woman. Clad in crinoline, layers of frills and voluminous knickers she got stuck in the gondola on her first appearance, trapping Luis and Casilda, helplessly behind her. Her duke, a suitably diminutive figure, marched towards the audience to sing his first line. She added her line in cue, horizontal in her frills. Eventually, free on stage and thinking fast, she berated the negligent Duke crossly with her parasol at every opportunity for the rest of the number.

A bemused Donkin, meanwhile, was in the audience which was rocking with laughter at such original stage business. The production won the South West NODA award for excellence. His productions of the Pirates of Penzance and Iolanthe won the same accolades in different years too.

His work often wins prizes. Three times he has taken the best director’s trophy home from Buxton, for example. His Houston production of the Mikado earned them the title of International Champions and his Yeoman of the Guard with Taunton Operatic Society won the Bristol Evening Post’s Rose Bowl award for the best production in the south west.

The Donkin secret seems to be an electric combination of tradition and freshness. The HMS Pinafore which I enjoyed so much in Cambridge, for example, gave us seven - yes seven - encores for Never Mind the Whys and Wherefores, many of them almost exactly as WS Gilbert set them down. But since so few directors now do encores at all, it seemed almost innovative.

On the other hand he argues that these lovely little works are not museum pieces and that it’s a mistake to be too pure. “Their creators meant them to be living theatre,” he points out. Although Donkin won’t change WS Gilbert’s words, he encourages actors to ham up the sillier bits and does his own thing with staging.