Word: gilbertians
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...PIRATES OF PENZANCE. John Reed, doyen of the D'Oyly Carte and leading Gilbertian, delights in an off-Broadway stint as Major General Stanley...
...skips along in familiar G & S style: the mistaken identities, the thwarted romances, the brutally clever patter, all set to a jolly, stirring score. Yet throughout the operetta there runs an uncharacteristic current of grandeur and sobriety--just when the final scene seems to be resolving itself with happy Gilbertian expedience, the leading character staggers onto the stage and dies a prolonged, hideous death...
...banditry−bandit being of Italian origin−and that kidnaping is as much part of the Italian scene as opéra bouffe. (The great master of English opéra bouffe, W.S. Gilbert, was kidnaped as a baby in Naples−an event both Neapolitan and Gilbertian.) And it is true that it has traditionally been hard to think of Italy as tranquil, law-abiding, prepared to solve its problems through calm discussion and the slow process of democracy. Italy is a very new democracy, and its citizens distrust democracy as they have always distrusted more autocratic forms...
...fair, this spoof on late Victorian aestheticism and its pretentiously empyrean devotees is not sterling Gilbert & Sullivan. Patiencedoes have its share of Gilbertian humor, mostly deriving from the parody of aesthetic attitudinizing, and its plot is powered by the usual sort of Gilbertian paradox--in this case, an identification of love with duty which brands the love of anything worth loving as undutiful. But it lacks the consistently memorable score that distinguishes Pirates of Penzance, for example, or the brilliant comic sequences which make Iolanthea favorite...
...goes to a country house to steal jewels and runs off with the daughter of the aristocrat who owns the estate instead. Although Softly Speaking stands apart as one of the few originals in a season of adaptations, at least in name, Fuller's play has a decidedly Gilbertian...