Word: gayness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...also the best part of the Adams House Drama Society's valiant--if not altogether successful--rendering of John Gay's classic The Beggar's Opera. Audience involvement in the cast's antics is the keynote of this production; if the rest of the show can't fulfill the promises of the opening, it's at least partly because the audience has a hard time getting involved in a series of jokes it can't understand...
While the assumptions underlying Gay's 1728 ballad-opera--that human nature is universally corrupt, that greed, vice and pettiness are not limited to any one social class--are as valid as ever, much of the play's humor derives from specific references to 18th century mores that are necessarily dated. To be sure, high class ladies still affect airs and politicians are still crooks, but we no longer comprehend Gay's jabs at Walpole and his ministers, nor do we have as much patience with the constant appellation of every woman as "hussy" or "slut". Not, for that matter...
...voice, however, partially compensates for the weakness of her acting. Musically, in fact, the entire cast of The Beggar's Opera is unimpeachable. While Ben Cox's Macheath displays more world-weariness and self-parody than vigor, he sings in a melodious high tenor that does ample justice to Gay's ballads. Toulouse too has an outstanding, well-controlled soprano--although her duets with Polly would be more effective were she a contralto...
Despite the exertions of a talented cast, The Beggar's Opera founders as a result of sheer length. As a play, Gay's opera is too concerned with satire to retain much dramatic force, and three hours of sometimes dated humor interspersed with dozens of similar-sounding ballads is just too much tediousness for mere talent to overcome...
...play a not very bright sister who talks loudly and does what my mother used to call 'all the grunt work' " -including the delivery of hush money to a men's room in Philadelphia. At that point, justice triumphs, and Sandy is nabbed as a gay on the prowl...