Word: fairfaxes
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...clerical celibacy, and some lay Catholics have misgivings too. Says Nurse Slevin: "I cannot see how one could have children and be a full-time priest. He would have to spend more time on his children's development and less on parish problems." But Margaret Howells, of Fairfax, Va., finds that her experience of going through a marital separation "makes me call for a married priesthood." Says she: "The priests need to experience as well as study the problems and joys of marriage...
...While Fairfax's friend Sgt. Meryll and Meryll's amorous daughter Phoebe plot his escape, the convicted sorcerer resolves to deprive his kinsman of the pecuniary benefits of his treachery by wedding an unknown bride before his execution. The rescue comes too late to prevent the marriage of Fairfax to Elsie, who was previously affianced to the jester Jack Point. Once escaped, Fairfax unhappily finds himself "free, yet in fetters held," and the plot begins to unravel in usual Gilbert and Sullivan fashion...
...perhaps not so usual. There's something decidedly peculiar about a comic opera in which no one's final happiness is convincing. Of the three marriages in the show, two spring from coercion, and the third--the wedding of Fairfax and Elsie--originates as a strategem to defraud an undeserving kinsman, proceeds only through bribery of the bride and, most importantly, culminates in the rejection and desolation of two abundantly worthy suitors...
...voice is so stirring and powerful that it overwhelms any deficiencies in her acting. By contrast, Linda Anne Kirwan is a gifted comedienne, handling the part of Pheobe with real comic flair and singing well, if less vigorously than her rival. Roberto Gaston makes an extraordinarily winning Fairfax, with his broad toothy grin, strong tenor and charming Gilbertian sense of the absurd...
...Elsie's ballad, the best numbers in the show include Point's cynical patter song ("Oh a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon"), "Were I thy bride," during which Phoebe dallies with Wilfred while her father steals his keys, and "A man who would woo a fair maid," Fairfax's own testament to his success as a lover...