Plus ça change, plus …
About the opening night of Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri at the Savoy Theater in London, November 1882, a reviewer wrote: “Neither Mr. Gilbert, as an author, nor Mr. Sullivan, as a musician, write for immortality. The school they have founded may not, perhaps, last far beyond their own time; nor can it be said that their operas are likely to confer any benefit upon the future lyric stage.”
One hundred and twenty-seven years later, we can safely say the critic was mistaken. Although most of the musical and theater pieces of their era are long forgotten, except perhaps within the UK, Gilbert and Sullivan continue riding their hobbyhorse around the stage with sublime fun and quixotic, but telling, logic. The Lamplighters’ production of Iolanthe, which played this past weekend at the Dean Lesher, underlined the operetta’s relevance with wonderful choreography and excellent singing.
Iolanthe is a lovely work: frothy with silliness and eccentricity, underneath which lay minds devious with human understanding and satirical aplomb. As in most Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, the follies of institutional and class structure are placed in contrast to a frivolous but innocent “outsider” group; in their interaction, the latter renders the former harmless, and everyone, especially the audience, leaves happy and humming. In Iolanthe, the establishment is the peerage, the movers and shakers of the House of Lords. The “outsider” group is a cluster of adorable fairies—the ones that have wings and “gambol on gossamer.”
The two groups are not as far apart as one might think. The peris open the operetta in a Fairyland set of huge painted blossoms. Dressed in multicolored chiffons, pink tights and pink ballet slippers, they flutter around in some exceptional comic choreography by Erica Smith, and sing: “Tripping hither, tripping hither/ Nobody knows why or whither.” Several songs later, the entrance of the Lords, garbed in multicolored velvets and ermine, reveals that the Lords don’t know much about “why or whither” either, but their sense of class power is well entrenched. Their opening song includes the lyrics: “Bow, bow, ye lower-middle classes/ Bow bow, ye tradesman, bow, ye masses!”
When was the last time you saw a mainstream Broadway musical treating the American government with such directness and with such an eye to its weaknesses and vanities? Imagine a Rockette-style line of senators in suits, kicking in rhythm while singing “Bow, bow, ye lower-middle classes.” Nice. No wonder Gilbert and Sullivan have stayed the course.
The plot includes love. Love is what neutralizes the “meanness and shame” of the established class. In Iolanthe, love is personified in the characters of Strephon and Phyllis, the Arcadian shepherd and shepherdess, sung by tenor William Giammona and soprano Sharon Rietkerk. Their foil, the Lord Chancellor who is also in love with Phyllis, was performed by F. Lawrence Ewing with skillful humor and balletic grace.
Six of one, half dozen of another
Shepherd Strephon is the child of a marriage between the fairy Iolanthe and the Lord Chancellor, which allows the librettist to touch ever so lightly on issues of racial identity. Strephon is half one and half the other. It’s his upper half—to the waist—that is fairy, while his lower half—his legs—are mortal. The logic around that is topsy-turvy precise: “Down to the waist I’m a Tory of the most determined description, but my legs are a couple of confounded Radicals, and on a division, they’d be sure to take me into the wrong lobby. You see, they’re two to one, which is a strong working majority.”
At the Fairy Queen’s bidding, Strephon goes into politics. Hopefully, Obama will have as much success with his legislative body, for when Strephon joins Parliament, every bill he proposes passes, including one that requires the peers of the House of Lords to be selected for intelligence.
Eventually, all the Lords marry all the fairies and fly away to Fairyland, leaving the House of Lords to a house of brains. Don’t you love it? I know he was a Representative, but imagine … Newt Gingrich married to a fairy.
—Jaime Robles
This article originally appeared in the Piedmont Post