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THE INDEPENDENT • THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 2013
Review
Irresistible 'Iolanthe' Coming to Livermore By Susan Steinberg “Iolanthe” will be the best end-of-summer treat as Gilbert and Sullivan’s sassiest classiest show arrives at the Bankhead Theater for two performances on August 24 and 25. Presented by the international-award-winning San Francisco Lamplighters, this new production has been polished to musical and comical perfection by veteran director Barbara Heroux. From the lively overture to the rollicking finale, the show bubbles over with wonderful music, from the famous “patter songs” to lovely romantic ballads. Witty jabs at a ponderous and ineffective legislature provide humor that modern audiences also find wickedly funny. Describing mandatory party-line votes, a sagacious sentry observes that all politicians “if they’ve a brain and cerebellum too, they’ve got to leave that brain outside and vote just as their leaders tell ‘em to.” Laughter explodes. The hereditary nobility who form Britain’s House of Peers come in for special satire. Entering in a pompous parade of regal robes and crowns, heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, they proclaim their supposed superiority: “We are peers of highest station, paragons of legislation, pillars of the British nation.” But Gilbert wittily reveals their inadequacy, as an Earl exclaims, “I have the highest respect for brains – often wished I had some myself!” Deliciously silly is
the sight of entire proud House of Peers begging abjectly for the love of Phyllis, a pretty young country maiden. They scorn her lowly origin, but assure her that they have “birth and position that’s plenty, with blood and behavior for 20." An indignant Phyllis rejects their condescending proposal, asserting that “in lowly cot alone is virtue found.” Shocked, the lords protest, “Spurn not the noblyborn with love affected nor treat with virtuous scorn the well-connected. High rank involves no shame, we boast an equal claim, with him of humble name to be respected.” Here’s a topsy-turvy how-de-do indeed, in a world where the upper classes shunned lowly marital matches (as cheekily satirized in “HMS Pinafore”). Here, in an outrageous parody of British class distinction, it is the nobles who are forced to plead for the respect of the morally superior lower classes. What a laugh Victorian audiences must have had, and how funny modern audiences still find the idea in our age of “upward mobility.” Other clever Parodies abound, including the spoof of Wagner’s newly – popular “Ring Cycle," featuring Siegmund, a hero born of the god Wotan and a human woman, just as the G & S hero Strephon is the son of a human father and fairy mother. Siegmund’s son Siegfried has a noisy gaggle of aunts who ride
Photo above is of the Peers.
Cary Ann Rosko as the Fairy Queen (double cast with Sonia Gariaeff) and Rick Williams as the Lord Chancellor (double cast with F. Lawrence Ewing), photo by David Allen, Iolanthe 2013
about singing at the top of their lungs. Strephon also has a horde of aunts - all his mother’s sisters – a bevy of scampering singing fairies who look like teenagers because they are immortal. Of course this causes major problems when his fiancée Phyllis sees him kissing Iolanthe, his mother. She and the lords mock his guileless explanation exclaiming, “To find a mother younger than her son is very curious, and that’s a kind of mother that is usually spurious.” After a painful math calculation they declare, “Her age upon the date of his birth was minus eight, if she is seventeen and he is five and twenty.” This outrages the fairies and their offended Queen casts a spell that
forces the peers to gyrate wildly around the stage in a ludicrously awkward chorus-girl routine. Even worse, she decrees that Strephon, a simple shepherd, will be sent into Parliament with the magic power to command the votes of every political party. Great chaos ensues, since long speeches and delaying procedures (think Congressional filibusters) cannot block his proposals. As the fairies explain to the horrified lords, “It’s our fairy system – it shortens debates.” In light of our current legislative logjams, that’s a line which always sets listeners laughing. The fairies themselves are also curiously comical. In an age when Peter Pan was popular, and fairytale books showing dainty winged sprites graced every library, Gilbert dared to satirize the whole sappy (to him) notion of Fairyland. In a ravishing opening scene created by JeanFrancois Revon, the fairies flutter about beneath a towering growth of gigantic leaves and flowers, appearing petite and diminutive. It is a perfectly magical setting, with exquisite pastel costumes by the late great John Gilkerson, and flitty music reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. The idyllic effect is dispelled by Gilbert’s matter-of –fact lyrics, “Tripping hither, tripping thither, nobody knows why or wither . . . If you ask the special function of our neverceasing motion, we reply (continued on page 5)