I learned so much, working on this cabaret revue of Gilbert & Sullivan with the enormously funny Tom Kneebone. My job was finding the quirkiest bits of Gilbert & Sullivan’s lives and their relationship. Then Tom & I would hash it out, find what worked and what didn’t and he would give it the perfect theatrical twist.
Hence we said we “devised” it rather than wrote it. Howard did the musical adaptations, and Angela Leigh was the director, an unusual choice. She had been a founding member and principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada – and she chain-smoked. She knew how apparent seriousness can be outrageously funny, how much was too much, and her choreography on a tiny cabaret stage was a wonder.
In 1983 Ryerson Theatre mounted a production, and it was one of the first shows that Tom produced when he became Artistic Director of The Smile Theatre Company in 1987. Not long before he died, Tom and I had begun talking about writing another show together about the Northwest Mounted Police. He called up and said, very dramatically, “I have FOUND a STORY!” In 2003 Tom was awarded both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario for his theatre and community accomplishments.
