Three Men in a Boat - a reading with Victorian Parlour Music

Portsmouth Festivities Friday June 25th

Box Office 023 9282 6722

Jerome K Jerome’s splendid story of three companions and Montmorency the dog making a boating trip up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford, has been popular since its publication in 1889. For this adaptation, the musical references have been realised: the ‘Soldier’s Chorus’ from

Gounod’s Faust; Harris’s mixing of the ‘First Lord’s Song’ from Pinafore with the ‘Judge’s Song’ from Trial by Jury; and the music hall song ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’. George’s banjo is represented by ‘Oh Susannah’; Uncle Podger’s do-it-yourself misshaps are commemorated with ‘When Father papered the Parlour’; ‘Twickenham Ferry’ by Theo Marzials was declared ‘the song of the season, a perfect gem!’. The scene is set with Algenon Drummond and Edward Woodhouse’s 1878 setting of William Johnston Cory’s ‘Boating Song’