Word: gilberte
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celled before as Gilbert and Sullivan’s tragic jester, Jack Point, but Oussama Zahr ’04 makes it difficult to imagine that the part could have been created for anyone else. With a knack for showing utter despair while flashing a bigger smile than a hopeful at the last punch event, he is the driving center of the most entertaining Gilbert and Sullivan show in recent Harvard memory...
Point is a nasty part—a nasty part in a nasty show. If Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are as English as a cup of tea (and this is a show that makes its audience sing “God Save the Queen” before the overture), then The Yeomen of the Guard is the cup that got laced. It is operetta on crack. The plot starts off with characteristic gleeful entanglement, but when the time comes to tidy everything up for neat resolution, the miraculous ploys fail and tragedy, usually avoided by a hair?...
...start of the play, Point allows his fiancée, Elsie, to marry Fairfax, a prisoner about to die within the hour, in exchange for money. Simple enough—well, for a Gilbert and Sullivan show...
...will recognize elements of themselves in Point, which is what helps make Yeomen so powerful. Though the psychology of his character is troubling, Zahr is a joy to watch—and he is not the only actor on stage with considerable presence. Yet the piece is still unmistakably Gilbert and Sullivan: the operative words remain comedic diversions...
Though this production has all the flaws and amateurishness of a typical mounting of the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players—namely barely adequate sets, an uneven orchestra and a laughably small chorus—the talent on stage has the Midas touch...