The Lamplighters, San Francisco's Gilbert & Sullivan troupe, is reinventing itself, due to the financial pressures facing local theatrical groups of all kinds now. No more large-scale productions carted around to big local theaters around the Bay Area; they're commencing small-scale productions in small local theaters in the City. This Iolanthe's entire run was sold out before the first performance, so I can't send you to it even though it'll be running next weekend; all I can say is that they'll be doing Pirates of Penzance in the spring.
The venue was the ODC Theater in the Mission district, just three blocks from the BART station, a small space converted from a brick warehouse by installing a steeply raked bank of merely nine rows of seats on one side. Since it looks like one anyway, the setup was a backstage theater area, with costume racks and other paraphernalia floating around; the setting was simultaneously the London of the original 19C show, with a bit of San Francisco salted in, and the backstage it looked like. Private Willis was converted to a stagehand, and made several nonspeaking appearances in that capacity in Act 1 before his first canonical appearance in Act 2, for instance.
There were a few other tinkerings with the text, mostly to change outdated references. Strephon is now "a parliamentary Costco: he carries everything." When Mountararat says "This comes of women interfering in politics," he's roundly booed, and the conductor, former Lamplighters star soprano Jennifer Ashworth, says, "Watch it, baritone."
The costumes, however, were scarfed from the Lamplighters' extensive costume shop which covers decades of productions, so they were full-scale. Mostly pretty conventional, though the fairies were in dark and eerie hues.
The performances were lively and full of imaginative stage business. When the fairies want to run around but not be seen, they put big signs reading "Invisible" around their necks. The only thing that didn't work was the fairies' ability to control the peers' movements, which made hash out of the "don't go" song. The best singer all-round was Ash Hurtado as Phyllis. Her voice was a quite spectacular combination of the light and delicate with the strong and powerful. The dialogue between Mountararat (John Melis) and Tolloller (Jacob Bronson) where they're trying to negotiate over claims to Phyllis's hand was also quite delightfully done. Iolanthe (Rose Waldman) dominated the show rather than being buried underneath everyone else as often happens. Strephon (newcomer Matt Skinner) was bluff and intense, the Fairy Queen (Sonia Gariaeff) was fierce when she ought to have been, nd the Lord Chancellor (veteran Chris Uzelac) was played with heft but a minimum of eccentricity.
As an experiment, this worked, but I hope they come up with different new and original ideas for subsequent shows.
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