David Coffin, who succeeded Langstaff as onstage master of the Revels in 1990, is a fine baritone who gets better every year. His voice has an uncanny ability to be simultaneously bold as bells and rippling with human emotion: the perfect instrument for rousing an audience to sing. Dressed and acting like a very fit Falstaff, he cajoled the crowd into song with his sly definition of harmony (“the part the person next to you is not singing”).
Coffin sang the ritual act-one finale of Lord of the Dance as an unmistakable homage to Langstaff, adding a particularly fierce determination to the line “But I am the dance and I still go on”.