Word: operettas
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...inconsistent performing spoil the fun for everyone. Even G&S aficionados who ordinarily revel in riproarious productions of favorites like The Mikado and the H.M.S. Pinafore--will have a hard time sitting through this long and uninspired production of Utopia Limited or Flowers of Progress. We watch the operetta wilt before our eyes...
...spareness, the operetta rarely lags. For one, Brown has spruced-up the longer songs with clever shticks at one side of them: language-lab subtitles for a scene sung in Italian and a caricature-in-process to accompany a song about feminine perfection. For another, it's never tiresome just to stare at Martha Eddison's stylish costumes; they have a funky, continental allure rarely seen outside the pages of a fashion magazine and a few tables in the Adams House dining hall...
Finally, the cast boasts a handful of exceptional performers. Though so many performers are drawn from outside the College--long-standing, misguided G & S Players practice--the strongest and most professional performance in the operetta comes from a freshman: Nan Hughes as Tessa, one of the gondoliers' brides. Hughes is a natural actress, and her commanding, sensuous mezzosoprano is the vocal equivalent of chocolate-chocolate chip ice-cream. Margery Hellmold's performance as Casilda is further proof that first-rate singers enroll at Harvard: her soprano has a rare purity and vigor but never becomes inappropriately operatic...
...film, a stylized musical set in Las Vegas on Independence Day, recounts the affairs of a junkyard owner (Frederic Forrest) with two women: a travel agent (Teri Garr) and a circus star (Nastassia Kinski). Coppola calls Heart "a lounge operetta, pretty and sweet. I've made too many gangster and soldier movies. I like fantasy and fable-it's a large part of me." It is also a huge part of the film's budget: Dean Tavoularis' dazzling sets cost more than $6 million to build. The film went $11 million over the original budget, shooting...
...tinkering around with Sir Arthur Sullivan's score a little to make the romantic Victorian solos sound more like "It's So Easy to Fall in Love." The other is to follow the sturdy set of schticks that has been handed down virtually unchanged over the years since the operetta's debut a century ago with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. To his credit, Paul O'Neill has chosen a middle ground in his direction of the Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players' fine new production of Pirates, bringing a few prudent but innovative changes on the time-worn...