Word: gilberte
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...slip into an unpleasant pedantic style: "Careful writers use dived rather than dove in the past tense." But even less frequent notes on the origin or phrases turn up interesting information; the term "poobah," for example, a person who holds many offices at once, comes from a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado...
...Colonel Fairfax, Donald Hovey also stands out. An unusually complex role among Gilbert and Sullivan leading tenors, Fairfax begins as a thoroughly sympathetic character. But by the end of the operetta, he becomes a callous rake, and his marriage to the strolling singer Elsie Maynard leaves two characters heart-broken: Phoebe and Jack Point, the jester who loves Elsie...
Hovey handles this transformation prudently, choosing not to act out a drastic change of character, instead letting the circumstances around him shape his metamorphosis. His easy command of Gilbert's dialogue renders his earnest, deadpan performance natural and often slyly comical. Hovey uses his strong, sweet tenor to a similar end, mocking ever so slightly his heartwrenchingly serious solos...
...minstrel Elsie, Lisa Sheldon is convincing. Though polished and powerful, her soprano unfortunately lapses occasionally into an operatic ardor and intensity out of place in a light opera at the tiny Agassiz Theater. Her enunciation is murky, at times, with the result that she swallows many of Gilbert's swifter lyrics. Still, her opening duet with Jack Point "I Have a Song to Sing O" is the operetta's high point: sorrowful, simple, and affecting...
...orchestra, conducted the afternoon I attended by freshman wunderkind Stuart Malina, provided sturdy if uninspired accompaniment. Harriet D. Silbaugh's Tudor scenery has ginger-bread-house charm. And all in all, two misguided performances notwithstanding, the Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players give a classy operetta a yeomanly production...