Word: operettas
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...parade, and two others, "Who Cares?" and "Love Is Sweeping the Country," still put a 2/4 spring in the step of many a geriatric. But the score was no succession of stand-alone ballads and dance tunes. Ira referred to the show as an operetta and, in the Gilbert and Sullivan mode, each song fits into the plot, advances the improbable story and fleshes out the characters, all the while parading its jazzy insouciance. Sometimes Ira can be just on the lyric side of lewd. In "Never Was a Girl So Fair," a hymn to Miss Devereaux's allure...
Produced by Margaret D. Maloney ’06 and Charlie I. Miller ’08, directed by Roxanna K. Myrhum ’05, and with musical direction by Emily Senturia, the operetta is a delightful update of one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s best. It is not so much that they are faithful to the nearly 120-year-old material, as it is that they retain the spirit of the original writing and music without making it too stiff or old-fashioned...
...best thing about this operetta is that it musically goes a step beyond the rest of the “Savoy Operas,” as the classic-era G&S operas were called. While the story is appropriately wacky and amusing, one appreciates when characters frequently stop to wax poetic or to throw off an endless stream of words in beautiful song...
There’s another significant element of the operetta: it’s not really a happy ending. As the story isn’t known to everyone, I won’t reveal its conclusion, but suffice it to say that Gilbert and Sullivan were obviously trying to aim higher than your standard crowd-pleaser. Keeping in that tradition of classically British humor, the performers do a great job of allowing us to laugh in the face of other people’s misfortune; only the most sensitive of viewers would consider this production a tragedy...
...well-designed set by Courtney E. Thompson ’09, if not quite as grand as the emotional and musical ambitions of the operetta, is limited only by the constraints of the Agassiz. Lighting designer Christen L. McDuffee ’08 made great choices with the multi-tiered set, and the Ravenmaster (Nick Bentley) sported a funny-looking but well-made raven puppet, the symbolism of which I have yet to figure out (as do the two noisy old people who sat next...