Word: operettas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Suggested (though hardly inspired) by Victor Herbert's 1903 operetta, in which Mother Goose was overstuffed with theatrical goodies, Disney's nursery crhymes involve Tom Piper (Tommy Sands), Mary Contrary (Annette), Boy Blue, Bo Peep, Willie Winkie, Simple Simon, Jack and Jill, and Mother Goose herself, along with some ringers called Roderigo, Gonzorgo, Barnaby (Ray Bolger) and the Toymaker (Ed Wynn). Tom and Mary, the story goes, are about to be married, but that naughty old Barnaby, wielding a wicked snickersneer, does his worst to louse up the proceedings...
...this one has come to expect from the G & S Players; they possess the singular ability of fashioning entertainment out of dull nineteenth-century spoofs. But because of the ridiculously large number of playlets that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote, they can only occasionally hit upon an operetta that has any humor of its own. Iolanthe, happily, is such an operetta: W.S. Gilbert, for once, lampooned a group he actually knew by sight--instead of pirates and Japanese--and the result, coupled with Sir Arthur's magnificent mock-hymns, was a grandly devastating jibe at the Victorian Establishment. Peers sweep around...
...fairy ring is perhaps somewhat less successful (and the girls are not helped by an unfortunate etymological process which has added an unlooked for ribaldry to the operetta). Only Celia (Miss Elinor Martin) has the wild-eyed boredom proper to a group of immortals who cannot determine why they bother to trip their completely meaningless measures. And Miss Colleen Ryan, the Queen of the Fairies, despite her attractive contralto voice, lacks the heavy authority of a true monarch...
...Vienna filigreed in confectioner's icing, a wedding extravaganza such as only Broadway angels can afford. In and about these Oliver Smith settings cavort the Wiener Burger, garbed by Lucinda Ballard in resplendent turn-of-the-century costumes. Unfortunately, there is little more to this comic operetta than meets the eye, or greets the ear in a waltzy-schmalzy score. The best way to simulate an evening at The Gay Life is to do what is done onstage: open two bottles of flat champagne...
...Operetta may be instant opera, but Gilbert and Sullivan still demands voices. In this predominantly British company, the voices are not only superior, they are clearly intelligible. As Mabel, the perky fiancee of Frederic, the dutiful pirate's apprentice, Marion Studholme pours lyric intensity into Poor Wandering One to make it the evening's high sigh spot. As Major General Stanley, spindle-thin Eric House tackles the greatest polysyllabic scat song of the 19th century and "in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral" he is never tongue-tried. But Frederic, as played by Andrew Downie, is more arch boulevardier...