Word: rackstraw
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...momentum never waning, the cast easily metamorphoses during the two-hour Pinafore production: Trial by Jury's defendant, played by Monnen, becomes Pinafore's handsome young hero, Ralph Rackstraw. Crowley assumes another leadership position as the ship's Captain Corcoran, and a newcomer to the evening's spectacle, Sebastian Knowles, plays the pompous Sir Joseph Porter. All three men, along with Craig Bierko as Dick Deadeye and Jo Milroy as Little Buttercup, give the evening's most superb performances. Crowley successively displays the Captain's frustrations in trying to convince his daughter Josephine (Nancy Fatzick) to marry Sir Joseph. Countering...
...plain declarative style of tonal realism, whose American master is Philip Pearlstein, is hardly in evidence, although there are some exquisitely rendered pastel studies of gray, tumblng Midwestern skies by William Beckman at the Hirshhorn, and the Whitney has some beautifully observed images by William Bailey (still life) and Rackstraw Downes (panoramic landscape). The best figurative work at the Guggenheim is by the oldest of the "emergent" artists, the 63-year-old West Coast movie critic and former abstractionist Manny Farber. His still lifes of labels, dolls, mementos and children's toys, deceptively casual in arrangement and laid...
...operetta utterly deadpan--letting the audience laugh at these ridiculous characters--or to reveal that they, too, know the whole thing is a joke. Catherine Weary's sparkling Josephine holds the stage through sheer vocal perfection alone--she could probably handle Puccini with ease. Donald Hovey's Ralph Rackstraw, too, has a full, clean tenor. Now, admittedly there isn't all that much anyonecan make of the milquetoast roles of the love-struck couple; but both Weary and Hovey shuffle between dead seriousness and deadpan tongue-in-cheek...
Seltzer has ample material to work with. Take Tom Fuller. Having played just about every male lead in recent G&S history, from Ralph Rackstraw to Nanki Poo, Fuller last year went backstage to direct a first-class Iolanthe. Now he's back as Frederic, the pirate apprentice, and he's even better than ever. His mellow tenor ably navigates the vagaries of Sullivan's music, and the expressions of dolefulness and misgiving his face so readily assumes are perfect for the benighted slave of duty...
...under the auspices of the Gilbert and Sullivan Players. The Players come closer than any other theatrical group at Harvard to being an ensemble company. Cast members perform together in show after show; some, like the versatile Tom Fuller, who played just about every G & S hero from Ralph Rackstraw to Nanki Poo before directing Iolanthe last fall, are Harvard legends...