I rate this performance as the best I have ever heard. And I've heard dozens including all the D'Oyly Carte ones going by back to the acoustic recordings. What a brilliant performer Olsen was in these roles.
Now that I've stumbled onto Dennis Olsen, I'm going to check YT for all of his videos! What an astonishing, astounding, AMAZING performer! He really is, to use Henry Pleasant's term, a singing actor! Bravo!
Every word is clear, well-acted and sung! This is by far the best version of the Nightmare Song that I've found on youtube, deserves many more views. Thanks so much, 90s Kid for posting this superb rendition!
This was not 1980 but the 1970s. Dennis did spend 12 months with The D'Oyly Carte Opera company in the UK but on the whole he found his own feet in his craft and a good job too.
0:45 WHEN you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety; For your brain is on fire; the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you; Then the blanketing tickles; you feel like mixed pickles, so terribly sharp is the pricking, And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking. Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up in a tangle; Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle! Well, you get some repose in the form of a dose, with hot eye balls and head ever aching, But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much better be waking; For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich, Which is something between a large bathing machine and a very small second-class carriage, And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations; They're a ravenous horde; and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations. And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven. Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by-the-bye the ship's now a four-wheeler), And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer"; But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as cold as an icicle, In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle: And he and the crew are on bicycles too which they've somehow or other invested in. And he's telling the tars all the particulars of a company he's interested in; It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices, all goods from cough mixtures to cables (Which tickled the sailors) by treating retailers, as though they were all vegetables; You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots with a boot-tree), And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and they'll blossom and bud like a fruit tree; From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple and cranberries, While the pastry-cook plant, cherry brandy will grant, apple puffs, and three-corners, and banberries; The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring, And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing; You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover; But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been long, ditto, ditto my song, and thank goodness they're both of them over! Gilbert was a genious.
Indeed he was! The fact that his knighthood came at least a dozen years after Sullivan's suggests that WSG's very pointed satire was not always appreciated by the Brits who made decisions about knighthoods and suchlike. (Sullivan, on the other hand, was hailed as the "British Mendelssohn", despite the fact that Mendelssohn had been dead for over 20 years and European music had moved on - but was GILBERT ever lauded as the Second Coming of Jonathan Swift? No.) Gilbert's "Bab Ballads", with their quirky poems and even quirkier illustrations, give additional proof (as if any was needed!) of his whimsical, satirical nature. A great, Great Man was WSG, long may his lyrics live!
This is superb! Dennis Olsen is a very great talent little known outside Australia. His performance as Bunthorne in Patience is also outstanding. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mJCyN6rH2cM.html He has an amazingly dexterous voice, and makes every word count. His physical comedy is brilliant and extremely precise, with no excessive mugging or self-indulgence.
