Word: yeomens
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...patter song is less than amusing. In short, the whole show could use a good play doctor to tighten up both acts. The Gilbert and Sullivan style is recognizable to the point of obviousness: usually, however, Gilbert's quick with and Sullivan's facile orchestration make their operettas work. Yeomen of the Guard, like Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, never quite gets off the ground...
...Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players have chosen, tis pity, to do Yeomen straight and uncut, complete with the overwritten first act and the overlong second. What they have done, they have done well, sometimes even brilliantly. If only they had done some editing as well...
THIS IS not to say that there are not some bright spots in Yeomen, of course, or to imply that the G & S Players have not taken advantage of them. Much of Yeomen's semitragic ending exists merely as a vehicle for the lyrical tragic love duet. "I Have a Song to Sing, Oh", and Karl Deirup and Chalyce Brown carry it off movingly. Deirup's expressive little mime during the number is unusually effective, quite touching really. Brown's voice is in top form for her part...
Gilbert and Sullivan worked at cross purposes in the composition of Yeomen, and it shows in the finished work. Sullivan had decided, when he began to write, to sing a slightly greater theme, but Gilbert turned his pen, as usual, to satire, and humor. The result is a hodge-podge of conflicting plot lines, badly integrated score, and general confusion. When the Yeomen barcs its steel, we uncomfortable feel, and nothing short of a major revision would make us any more at home with the piece...
...Gilbert and Sullivan. Willi Apel has referred to their work as "the highest point attained in English dramatic music since Purcell," but this judgement can certainly not have been meant to apply to all of their works uniformly. What may be true of Iolanthe is not true of Yeomen, what may be true of Trial by Jury is not necessarily true of the Sorcerer. The determination to run through the G & S repertoire over and over agiin, the way Channel 56 runs through Basil Rathbone's 11 Sherlock Holmes films, may not be entirely justified. Perhaps G & S companies should...