Word: operettas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Thus, the Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players have undertaken an ambitious project, for the usual pitfalls of light Gilbert and Sullivan comedy--convoluted dialogue, supersonic lyrics, labyrinthine crowd scenes--are compounded by the anomalous need for simple pathos. They have overcome the dual difficulties of this operetta in a cautious, straightforward production of Yeomen that is both delightful and moving...
...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...
...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...
...several of his musical numbers, however, Emmons sheds his elfin aspect; in addition to his wonderful first duet with Elsie, he shows flashes of strong, satisfying comic talent in the "Creeping, Crawling" duet with Wilfred in Act Two. He also shines in the operetta's finale, bursting on the scene singing movingly the last refrain of "I Have a Song," and perishing. His actual death is regrettably melodramatic, but again, this is perhaps O'Neill's fault...
...Neill's greatest weakness, though, comes in his own characterization of jailer Wilfred Shadbolt. The performance call unwarranted attention to itself from the moment the lights go up. The script of the operetta opens with Phoebe at the spinning wheel singing alone; this Yeomen begins with O'Neill clattering across the stage and mugging at the audience, all to no apparent purpose...