There’s fairy dust strewn all over Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center. It’s not sprinkled as in Peter Pan, it’s a downpour. Everyone is covered in it, from the actors, stagehands, all production people, even the audience, especially the audience. You will feel lighter than air afterward. You will fly. As does this show from our own award-winning Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Houston. Surely this is the most beguiling production seen in Houston in months.
The magic, of course, arises from the comedy operetta, Iolanthe, written 140-some years ago by that peerless team of Arthur Sullivan (music) and William S. Gilbert (book and lyrics, and direction and probably scenic design and costumes, too). The ageless peri Iolanthe has only grown younger. The show was the seventh in their matchless collaboration of 14 that included The Mikado, H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Pirates of Penzance.
Not nearly as well known, Iolanthe has charms that run deep, unearthed as if by Indiana Jones by director Alyssa Weathersby and conductor Keith Chambers, with grand assist from an unrivaled cast, and a Technicolor fairyland of a production. With the Society’s take on this sublime “topsy-turvydom,” Iolanthe can now take its place among the greats.
The plot, as usual for Gilbert, is a satiric mishmash of politics, relationships, the most current events at the time, and, naturally, love, all while mocking stuffy Victorian conventions. What’s a musical without love and mockery of those who think they are the arbiters of taste and morality? Here, Gilbert’s keen knife cuts deep into the unending snobbery of the upper classes and takes a bitter swipe at Parliament and the do-nothings running the empire. How this even got on the boards without some sort of censorship is quite astonishing, but I guess since this is a comedy about fairies, anything was permitted.
And fairies abound. Arcadian shepherd Strephon (the ardent baritone Zack Scott Frank) is the son of the fairy Iolanthe (the stunning mezzo Meaghan Heath). She had fallen in love with a mortal, so Strephon is half man – the upper part – and half fairy – the legs. The Fairy Queen (Sarah Lee, another stunning mezzo) commuted her sentence of death for marrying a mortal, so Iolanthe’s been living in a stream with the frogs for 25 years. The other fairies beg the queen to let her come home, the queen relents, and Iolanthe joins the world of the “peris” once again. The musical gets weirder from here.
In love with Phyllis (young University of Houston soprano Avery Ditta, with the comic chops of Carol Burnett and the voice of an angel) who’s the ward of the Lord High Chancellor (the excellent comic baritone Wesley Landry), the match is nixed by the Chancellor who’s in love with her himself. But so is the entire Parliament. They all want to marry her.
As they parade down the aisles in one of Sullivan’s glorious comic marches, “Loudly Let the Trumpet Bray,” they primp and show off their British pride with insufferable attitude. They tap dance and flip their top hats in syncopation, waving tiny British flags to Weathersby’s inventive and Broadwayesque routine. They end in a kick line that drew roars of laughter and applause.
With fairy magic, Strephon is elected to Parliament where all his proposals go immediately into effect, causing havoc among the jealous and stupid peers. Then the fairies arrive and, seeing the men, go into heated overdrive. It is inventively staged and enormously funny, as is the entire production.
Expressive bass Richard Paul Fink stops the show in his comedy solo as a sentry guard, “When All Night Long a Chap Remains;” while Landry, as the Chancellor, mightily impresses with his unlawful interpretation, “The Law is the True Embodiment” and his nightmare fantasy with patter woven in and out, “Love, Unrequited, Robs Me of My Rest.” Everyone in the cast, though, shines.
What fun this is – a music hall review with glorious music, the most witty lyrics (Sondheim, our own century’s Gilbert, must take second place), a political satire with real bite, a gossamer set by Jodi Bobrovsky, neon-colored fairy costumes from Kat Jedlicka and the Performing Arts Supply Company, and Gilbert’s patented patter songs for everyone.
Throughout his career, Sullivan carped about writing for these silly stage musicals, but when his fortune crashed due to his broker’s mismanagement, he was forced to renew his contract with producer D’Oyly Carte and continue on. Thank the theater gods. Even cantankerous Sullivan had to admit that Iolanthe possessed some of his finest work. It is a lavish score with hints of whispery Mendelssohn for the fairies and a nudge to Wagnerian bombast for the Parliamentarians.
Maestro Keith Chambers and his orchestra of 28 and a finely-tuned male and female chorus under Joseph Rawley give old Sullivan the Broadway treatment with lush strings, booming brass, and tickling winds.
What would later transfer to America and morph into what we know as the “Broadway musical” began at the D’Oyly Carte Theatre, the first in the world to be lit by electricity. For the special effects, the fairies’ wands and headdresses were electrified by batteries, which stunned the audiences of the time, and, thereafter, all stage lighting would never be the same. Gas was gone with the wind.
If in need of an afternoon or night of pure entertainment and wicked wit, trust me, do yourself a favor: there’s nothing better than Iolanthe.
A note:
In many past reviews of the G&S Society of Houston, I have railed against the use of those tickertape-like side-wing title machines that were always a beat or two – or three – behind what was sung from the stage. They were extremely annoying in their being so out of sync and slightly out of eye shot. Well, they are gone. The Society has moved into the 21st century with overhead surtitles on the proscenium – where they belong. Everything is now in harmony. It makes all the difference in the world. Thank you.
Iolanthe continues at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 20; 7 p.m. Saturday, July 26; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 27 at Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-2525 or visit thehobbycenter.org. $18.45 to $153.50.