Music by Lionel Monckton and Ivan Caryll
Lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank
Book by J. T. Tanner
Directed by Pia Furtado
Musical Direction by Timothy Henty
Designed by Dora Wade
Produced by Susannah Stevens with Neil McPherson
Presented by Concordance by arrangement with Samuel French Limited

Cast:
Mr Toplady/ Earl of St Ives: Simon Clark
George/Taxi Cabby/Mr Beavis/Policeman/Bulge/Race Attendant: Adam Linstead
Miss Beauclerc/Connie: Savannah Stevenson
Lord Eynsford: Christopher Colley
Mrs Farrrquhar: Vivien Care
Duchess of Minster: Paddy Glynn
Lady Elizabeth Thanet: Katrine Falkenberg
Madame Jeanne: Helen George
Mary Gibbs: Celia Graham
Hon Hughie Pierrepoint: Stephen John Davis
Timothy Gibbs: Stuart Hickey
Slithers: Gary Tushaw

THE FIRST PROFESSIONAL LONDON PRODUCTION SINCE THE ORIGINAL 1909 PRODUCTION

Sundays, 30 April, 7 and 14 May 2006

"Arguably the best and most enduring of all the Gaiety musicals" - Kurt Ganzl

The multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre continues its Finborough Gaieties season, reviving the best of British Musical Theatre from 1870-1914. The first musical in the series - Florodora starring Olivier Award nominee Rosemary Ashe and Simon Butteriss was critically acclaimed and sold out. Now, for a limited run of three Sunday concert performances, we present local resident Lionel Monckton’s Our Miss Gibbs. The show was George Edwardes’ first production at the New Gaiety Theatre and ran for over 600 performances in 1909.

Miss Gibbs is a beautiful Yorkshire girl who sells sweets at Garrods’ store and is plagued by the attentions of young male customers, who are making themselves sick buying all her sweets. Miss Gibbs has fixed her heart on a handsome young bank clerk who – as one would expect – is in reality an Earl in disguise, Lord Eynsford. Miss Gibbs’ cousin, Timothy, soon arrives to complicate the situation further by becoming embroiled with a petty criminal and inadvertently stealing the famous Ascot Gold Cup (which belongs to Lord Eynsford’s father) The story reaches its climax at the Franco-British Exhibition in White City where the characters gather for the marathon race…

Director Pia Furtado’s credits include the acclaimed UK premiere of Jason Robert Brown’s Parade at the Edinburgh Festival, which was voted Critic’s Choice and Best Musical for the Three Weeks award and Reprieve Award. Musical Director Timothy Henty is a conductor with the Royal Ballet, and was the acclaimed Musical Director of Florodora.

Composer Lionel Monckton (1861-1924) was one of England’s most celebrated composers of musical comedies in the Edwardian era and had numerous successes including A Country Girl, The Cingalee, The Arcadians and The Quaker Girl. Married to musical star Gertie Millar, he is buried near the Finborough Theatre in Brompton Cemetery. Ivan Caryll (1861-1921) worked as the conductor and composer for the Gaiety Theatre. With book by J T Tanner (1858-1915), lyrics by Adrian Ross (1859-1933) and Percy Greenbank (1978-1968), Our Miss Gibbs was one of the most successful shows of its time, running for 600 performances.

The cast includes Celia Graham as Mary Gibbs – recently seen as Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera (Her Majesty’s Theatre); Vivien Care – recently seen in the West End in High Society H.M.S. Pinafore and Les Miserables; Simon Clark is currently working with Timothy West in The Old Country (Trafalgar Studios); Christopher Colley, recently seen in Sunday in the Park with George (Menier Chocolate Factory) in which he will shortly be appearing at the Wyndham's Theatre; Stephen John Davis is currently playing in Les Miserables (Queen’s Theatre) and has previously appeared in a number of D'Oyly Carte productions; Helen George was in the original cast of The Woman in White (Palace Theatre); Savannah Stevenson, recently seen in Mary Poppins; Gary Tushaw, recently seen in Les Miserables; Paddy Glynn's recent productions include Round the Horne .. Revisited (Forum Theatre) and major roles at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre; Katrine Falkenberg who reached the semi-finals of The BBC's Voice of Musical Theatre Competition; and exciting new talent Stuart Hickey and Adam Linstead.

The Press on Our Miss Gibbs
"Hats off to old musicals
Forgotten voices are celebrated in a room above a pub
The tiny Finborough - 50 unsubsidised seats over a pub - has been turned by its artistic director Neil McPherson into a hub of early-20th-century theatre: a place where forgotten voices are celebrated. The delicious froth of The Finborough Gaieties - semi-staged performances of Edwardian musicals - has proved so popular that Our Miss Gibbs (first produced in 1909 with music by Lionel Monckton and Ivan Caryll, lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank) now has returns only: over the Bank Holiday, devotees were trekking in from Halifax and Birmingham.
It's worth the queue to hear this buoyantly scored period piece, sung to a fi ve-piece orchestra with force, colour and sweetness. The heroine is a girl (well, lass) from Yorkshire, who works in a department store called Garrods (gerrit?) where customers and staff dote on her, even though 'in Debrett she isn't yet'. Her cousin plays second euphonium in Barnsley; her suitor says he's a clerk but is really a lord. Another toff - 'seems only yesterday he bought his baronetcy' - burgles houses for fun. There's a teeny-tiny daft plot and quite a lot of dimpling: 'I'm such a silly when the Moon comes out,' warbles the heroine. Millinery is massive: this could have been called 'Hats'."
Susannah Clapp, The Observer

"More fringe frolics from the days when tunes meant melodies.
Shopgirls, as well as showgirls, had their place in old musicals; the humbly subservient who made good. Sales assistant Mary Gibbs, in this 1909 piece of cultural fluff, has to make out in a smart London department store (cunningly called Garrods) despite her Yorkshire accent.
She easily steals hearts, unaided by aitches or proper vowels. There’s more stealing in a subplot involving a Raffles-like gentleman-burglar who always returns his loot. In fact, the whole thing’s entirely daft, making references to buying titles a satirical surprise.
This is the second of The Finborough Gaieties, a Sunday-night series of score-in-hand performances rehabilitating British musicals of 1870-1914. If this piece doesn’t have any show-stoppers like the first, Floradora, it’s a continually pleasant example of a theatre that confidently addressed its middle-class Edwardian audience (the original production ran 636 performances).
The tiny Finborough somehow manages a mix of concert and production with 11 singer-actors, plus an instrumental quintet with conductor...
The actors convincingly create the innocent fantasy of love across class-barriers and sheer comic lunacy that so delighted Edwardian theatregoers.
A big space accommodating big performances would ladle this cake in cream. But it would be hard to beat the freshness of Celia Graham’s Mary, star among shop-girls, Helen George as her eternally happy, utterly shallow colleague, Katrine Falkenberg’s dizzy-minded society girl or Christopher Colley’s lordly young ass.
The finale included a musical phrase resembling the title song of Oh, What A Lovely War. A final, unintended irony to this happy, frolicking world."
Timothy Ramsden, Reviwsgate.com