a Gilbert and Sullivan weekend

I went to two Gilbert & Sullivan performances this weekend. The first was a production by the Lamplighters, the premier G&S group around here, of H.M.S. Pinafore. Sometimes Lamplighters productions are superb; this one was merely quite good.

Lyric Theatre of San Jose is normally in a lower league, but they were absolutely spectacular this weekend in their gala anthology show, The Great Gilbert & Sullivan Sing-Off. The premise here is that three separate, and quite different, G&S groups are competing for a prize, going through one song of their choice in each of nine specified subject/ensemble rounds. Of course all the performers were pretty much the same people. (When one man appeared in two successive songs from different groups, the emcee asked, "Weren't you just in the last song?" and he replied, "That was my twin brother. We were exchanged at birth.")

The first group is a purist traditional group, and they did their songs straight. They were quite good, with special honors to the group's president, who was portrayed by Diane Squires, just about the most powerful soprano I've ever heard outside of a professional opera stage.

The second group likes to play around with the lyrics, the settings, or the singers. They're especially big on gender-swapping, and one of the best moments was when both they and the first group wanted to do "Poor Wandering One" in the same round, and their tenor (Eric Mellum) and Diane Squires traded off phrases, at first in feigned hostility and then coming together in harmony.

Funnier still was their penchant for doing SF versions. "I am the captain of the Pinafore" became the Trekkish "I am the captain of the Voyager" ("she's hardly ever de-evolved") and "Three little maids from school" became "Three little maids from space" with deely bobbers on their heads. Also, for Despard and Margaret's duet from Ruddigore ("I once was a very abandoned person"), they replaced the dance segments with wild abandon to tunes like "Hernando's Hideaway" and "Tea for Two."

But the third group was the silliest, being depicted as complete amateur beginners. They did "Never mind the why and wherefore" with Josephine (Leslie Oesterich) usurping the song from the Captain and Sir Joseph; they attempted "Tit-willow" without any accompaniment but didn't get very far; their Lady Jane ("Silvered is the raven hair") got into an argument with the supertitles which thought the song was ageist. But best of all was the Major General's Song, by a man pushed onto stage against his will, protesting that he didn't know the lyrics. He was played by Mark Blattel, actually a brilliant patter-song man who concocted the chaos that followed. He ad-libbed passages, he got the lyrics out of sync with the music, and he replaced bits with lyrics from other songs that might fit: the "matter matter" trio from Ruddigore, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and of course Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" which is actually set to the same tune. It was extraordinarily funny.

The whole show was performed with enormous joy and vigor, and the audience was enraptured.