Recent arts coverage:
- Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. The Rude Mechs are making a new play again
- Suburban battlefield: Women fight invisible foe in Amie Siegel’s ‘Black Moon’
- In eerie paintings by Ana Fernandez, a house isn’t just a house
More arts coverage | Follow this blog on Twitter @artsinaustin | Read recent arts reviews
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > June > 14
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Review: Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s ‘Iolanthe’
“All hail the influential fairy” might be the best line of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of “Iolanthe,” which opened Friday at Travis High School’s Performing Arts Center.
The members of the society, led by stage director and choreographer Ralph MacPhail, Jr., and music director and conductor Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, dedicate themselves with gusto and humor to one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s less often produced operettas. “Iolanthe” chronicles the follies that ensue when the English lady Phyllis (Meredith Ruduski) falls in love with Strephon (Derek Smootz) a shepherd, who, unbeknownst to Phyllis, is half fairy, half man.
The story, like many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, relies on a several twisting plot lines, most of which reveal the group of all female fairies and the all male peers (members of the upper-class British House of Lords) to be equally befuddled beings. I won’t give away “Iolanthe’s” moment of resolution, but the stage picture it creates makes sitting through the almost three-hour production worthwhile.
Gilbert and Sullivan lovers usually cite “Iolanthe” as some of Sullivan’s best music. Several performers brought lovely voices to the Gilbert’s speedy lyrics, which have to be sung almost too fast for projected subtitles to keep pace. As the intensely rigid Private Willis Russell Gregory nearly steals the show. Queen of the fairies Lisa Alexander, Earl of Mountararat David Fontenont, and Lord Chancellor Arthur DiBianca were among the show’s standout voices. Fontenont and DiBianca, with Andrew Fleming as Earl Tolloller had one of the better-staged and funniest scenes, trotting and skipping to the song “If You Go In.” The production continues through June 21.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
‘Iolanthe’ continues 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. For more information www.gilbertsullivan.org.
