San Francisco Classical Voice

OPERA REVIEW Gondoliers In The 1950s, A Sober Gondola

January 7, 2001

By William Ratliff

If Bush and Gore had known Gilbert and Sullivan, there needn't have been a Florida 2000. Check it out in the Lamplighter's colorful and fun-filled new production of Gondoliers currently on stage in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Theater.

During a muddled succession period, two young gondoliers govern their nation in perfect harmony as one individual while they wait to learn which of them is the legitimate ruler. While the audience waits with them, it is treated to some of Gilbert's cleverest and most poignant lyrics on love, socialist idealism, and human nature, and much of Sullivan's most tuneful and exhilarating music.

However, director Jane Hammett set much of the show not in 2000, nor in some traditionally G & S vague 19th century decade, but in the late 1950s/early 1960s, a period she says she associates with frivolity and idealism. She perceives the Venetians as a "Beach Party" gang and the Plaza Toro folks as out of a Fellini film, though not oppressively so. To convey this vision Hammett, with choreographer F. Lawrence Ewing and costume designer Jenica Lancy, inserted lots of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry-type antics, routines and clothes, though gags, stunts and colorful costumes from other times and places popped in as well.

The Duke gave his business address as "Duke-dot-com," Casilda and the Duchess turn up dressed like tourist bums with cameras and dark sun glasses, while a slick business-suited Don Alhambra, the constant bringer of bad tidings (e.g., reality), is accompanied by two comical mafia-like henchmen. The "old and crusted" Inez arrived as a lovely lady whose face is hidden until her testimony begins, behind a magazine with Elvis on the cover.

Over all, the modernizing provided a new perspective for those who know the show and maybe drew in some of the relatively few younger folk who were there. Some would consider it most unfortunate, however, if the practice of "updating" more than certain parts of the text becomes routine for the Lamplighters.

Lost Words

The impact of the production moreover, was lessened by lost words. In part this was bad enunciation, in part a problem of staging. Too often a phrase sung facing the audience came through, while a later line, with the singer facing up-stage, was lost. The house was full, but except for a few kids and adults who occasionally laughed out loud, you never would have known it.

One of the greatest D'Oyly Carte basses, Donald Adams, once told me he loved singing in America because audiences listened so carefully and laughed so often at the words. On Sunday Adams would have thought he was on Pluto. Maybe people on Sunday couldn't hear, couldn't understand, consider Gilbert passé, were put off by the Elvis-Meets-G&S setting. Whatever, surely life is at cross purposes when you go to a lively comic show and find that you think you're at a wake.

On Sunday afternoon conductor Monroe Kanouse officiated over the performance with a spirited chorus, fine orchestra and cast that included four leads making Lamplighter debuts, and was good save for those, mainly the women, with faulty enunciation. Peter Crompton's sets depicting Venice and Barataria were bright and beautiful. Gary Ruschman and Kirk Bangstad played the two lead gondoliers, Marco and Giuseppe respectively, while Linh Kauffman and Darla Wigginton were Gianetta and Tessa, their eager wives. Spirited actors all, Ruschman and the women had the more winning voices but Bangstad and Ruschman were much easier to understand.

Similarly, Don Tull as the Duke of Plaza-Toro, and John Emery Smyth as Luis both brought out Gilbert's punchy lines much more clearly than the women, Roberta Wain-Becker, the Duchess and Lanier McNab, Casilda. Everyone in this quartet, the Duke and his entourage, had a fine voice. Unexplained editing deprived the Duke and Duchess (and more importantly the audience) of one of the show's best numbers, the "Small titles and orders" duet.

Like Tull and Smyth, Jeremiah Hill, as Don Alhambra, presented an altogether satisfying performance on all counts. His baritone was rich and his enunciation of key lyrics was always clear. As Inez, assistant director Shelley Lynn Johnson had impeccable enunciation and good sound to boot .

There will be seven more performances at the Yerba Buena Theater through January 21 and four in Walnut Creek, January 25-27.

(William Ratliff, a Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University, is a former music critic of The Peninsula Times Tribune and stringer for The Los Angeles Times and Opera News.)