Darrell Fancourt - Later Years

Later Years

Fancourt continued to play most of the principal bass-baritone roles for D'Oyly Carte until 1953. The company performed almost year-round in repertory during these 33 years, and Fancourt appeared in well over 10,000 performances; he played the title role in The Mikado more than 3,000 times. Over the years, he performed with the company on seven tours in North America. Known for his excellent diction and vocal technique, Fancourt was an audience favourite during his long tenure. "Not only does he possess a velvety resonant bass tone but also has a relaxed vibrato that is particularly elegant." J. C. Trewin called Fancourt "the lord of Gilbert-and-Sullivan playing. ... Fancourt is both a fine singer and, within the Savoy convention, a fine and zestful actor with the gift of a dominating personality. Roderic's song 'When the night wind howls', as Fancourt sings it in the second act of Ruddigore, is at the meridian of that opera and one of the glories of Gilbert-and-Sullivan in the contemporary theatre." The Times later said, "nobody who heard it will ever forget his singing of 'When the night wind howls'."

Opinions differed about Fancourt's melodramatic style in his roles, especially his interpretation of his best-known role, that of the Mikado of Japan, and his famous Mikado laugh. Frederic Lloyd, who joined the D'Oyly Carte in 1951 and had studied the company's history, told an interviewer that Fancourt invented his interpretation, concerned that the earlier movements used during the Mikado's song could be taken as a Fagin-like caricature. According to Lloyd, Fancourt had said that, because of his Jewish background, "I just couldn't go through those movements, it would bother me", and Lloyd reported that, when Fancourt showed Rupert D'Oyly Carte and his stage director J. M. Gordon his new business for the song, they were delighted. Jessie Bond, who had played Pitti-Sing in the 1885 première, was unimpressed: "Who, I want to know, intended that the Mikado should prance about like a madman, hissing out his lines like a serpent? ... The raving monster we so often see now is not one bit like the suave and oily Mikado created at the Savoy." The Times thought that he "undoubtedly loses a good deal of the Mikado's humour... his 'humane Mikado' scene is the one which seems to have travelled farthest from the 'Savoy tradition'." A later Times review commented more favourably: "Mr Darrell Fancourt... can (and did) add a terrifying aspect to the benignity of his humaner punishment manifesto, and left us wondering how his vocal cords ever managed to function normally after those expressions of emphasis with which he punctuated its paragraphs." The Manchester Guardian praised Fancourt's fresh approach and added, "He makes more of the punishment-fitting-the-crime song than we can remember having seen from any other actor." The Pall Mall Gazette said, "Mr Fancourt has recognised that people can do with a 'thrill' in these Grand Guignol days. So he has given us a Mikado who really does curdle the blood, with a voice like a steam hammer slowly crushing a ton of Brazil nuts, and a make up of ghastly villainy, and a fiendish, gurgling laugh, which must be heard to be appreciated." Another critic described the sound of Fancourt's laugh as "a dragon getting up steam". With respect to Fancourt's portrayal of the Pirate King, fellow actor Henry Lytton told an interviewer, "The King should be a story book pirate, not a real one and blood thirsty to boot. But that's the way Mr. Fancourt plays it".

Fancourt was a cricket fan, an avid golfer and a fine bridge player and was popular among his colleagues. By the late 1940s, his health began to fail, and in 1950 he gave up the role of Mountararat. In his last year, he continued to perform although he was very ill. Fancourt received the O.B.E. in June 1953 in the Coronation Honours shortly after announcing his forthcoming retirement. The Illustrated London News commented, "He will be the greatest loss to professional Gilbert-and-Sullivan since Henry Lytton retired … Besides his voice and presence, he has the priceless gift of attack. To watch him attacking The Mikado is to watch high tide flooding across the beach: it is an irresistible surge and swell." Fancourt was too ill to make his scheduled final appearance, and as a last gesture he asked a friend to take his make-up to his successor, Donald Adams.

Fancourt died in August 1953 at the age of 67, 33 days after giving his last performance.