Word: operettas
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...Oyly Carte, now at the shubert, is performing "The Mikado" with all the polish and humor that the operetta needs. Martyn Green, who is one of the funniest men around in any company, climbs up the scenery and mugs furiously, but he hardly ever steps outside his role in the play, that of the Lord High Executioner. Darrell Fancourt, as the humane Mikado of the story, leers competently at his unfortunate subjects and utters the most grotesque chuckles that have been heard in Boston since he was last here nine years ago. The romantic leads are taken by Thomas Round...
Thus-last week began the third act of a romantic Balkan operetta which (thus far) had carried Rumania's 26-year-old King Michael and pretty Princess Anne Antoinette Franchise Charlotte of Bourbon-Parma through a lyrical, whirlwind courtship amidst the glitter of a British royal wedding and the dark second act of a Communist coup d'état in Bucharest...
Only the aticlonados are aware that in addition to their eleven famous operetta Gilbort and Sullivan collaborated on three other works that were comparatively unsuccessful when produced. None of the three has been recorded, and they are almost never produced, so the music has remained unfamiliar to even the most fanatic Savoyard...
...Peabody Players, who have been performing the old operetta standbys for years, did a valuable service last week by presenting "Utopia Ltd.," reputedly the best of the G. and S. black sheep. It was immediately evident that the reason the piece has been kept off the boards is not that its music of lyrics are inferior. Like the other operettas, "Utopia Ltd." has an internal mood all its own, closest perhaps to "The Gondoliers," the team's preceding production. Here are all the excellences of the great team; the unflagging whimsy, the astounding rhymes, the catchy and truly lyrical music...
...this operetta goes a lot further than any of its predecessors. "Utopia Ltd." has been unpopular since its first night in 1893 because it is just about as satiric as a light opera can be. Instead of attacking such innocent clay-pigeons as the nobility or Oscar Wilde or Tennyson, Gilbert allows his tricky verses to bite into the touchy and important phases of modern life. The hypocrisy behind commercialism in modern government and behind sexual morality is hit hard in this work about a utopian isle that tries to become anglicized. The king sends his daughters to be schooled...