Tarantara! Tarantara!

The play tells the story of two unlikely partners who were brought together long enough for the world to receive one of the greatest musical gifts it has ever known.  The famous Gilbert and Sullivan partnership: the meeting, the association with D’Oyly Carte, the mounting success, the divergences of temperament and conflicting ambitions, Gilbert’s obsession with his ‘lizenge’ story and the trouble it caused, Sullivan’s lavish social life and its disruptive consequences, his ill health, the famous tragi-comic quarrel over a new carpet for the theatre – these and many other episodes are covered.  Musical excerpts from the well-known operas are threaded into the story.