Gilbert’s original libretto, first performed in 1881, centred around the aesthetic ‘new religion.’ David Irving and John Hurton, in looking for a modern-day setting, hit upon the notion that the game of football has become the equivalent of the aesthetic ‘new religion’, with its mass appeal and the same type of adulation being heaped on today’s stars as it was upon their nineteenth century counterparts.

Our story is centred on the ailing North of England football club, Pithead Town – affectionately known as “The Pits”. The original production’s two rival poets are replaced by Buntoni (a pseudo-Italian) and Grosvenoir (a boring Belgian).

The innocent Patience, the daughter of a bishop, is a student working in her gap year in the club’s souvenir shop and cafe. The ladies are transformed from rapturous maidens into northern lasses, and the gentlemen of the chorus into the players of Pithead Town FC.

Music by Arthur Sullivan;
Lyrics by W.S. Gilbert.

New material by David Irving and John Hurton;
By kind permission of Gasleak Productions.