No Future For You
Now Playing: Arrah and the Ferns--"Bundle Up"
Gilbert and Sullivan remain something of a mystery to me. By last Satursay, I'd seen a TV production of The Mikado with Eric Idle (and, I think, Frank Thornton as the Grand Poobah) and had greatly enjoyed Topsy-Turvy (2000; the last movie ever seen in our old apartment on Spring Street and what I consider to be one of the best historical movies ever made). My newfound interest in opera encouraged me to go to the U-M Gilbert and Sullivan Society's production of The Grand Duke. I'd already chickened out of going to see the recent show of Smetana's The Bartered Bride, and promised myself I wouldn't pass up the chance to see anything remotely resembling an opera the next time it happened by.

It was a lot of fun. I still don't get the cult thing; Gilbert and Sullivan obsessions have cropepd up in everything from The Hand That Rocks The Cradle to The West Wing. The whole thing reminds me way too much of the godawful Rocky Horror phenomenon, but I come close to slandering Gilbert and Sullivan by placing them in the same category. The show was an agreeably farcical confection--mistaken identities, puns and in-jokes, none of which managed to be all that annoying. A group of actors in a generic German principality conspire, for various reasons, to usurp the throne from the doddering title characvter. A couple of hours later, everyone more or less winds up happier. I could have killed the ticketseller afterward, though. There's an unavoidably dopey tradition of singing "God Save The Queen" at the beginning of every show, and I was naturally placed next to a woman who had probably sung soprano professionally for someone, and dear God, did she belt it out. I sang along, but hated myself in the morning.

The sets were perfect--well-done, but none too convincing, which was just the thing for this fairy-tale bailiwick. The reduced orchestra played with brio, but it was the cast that owned the evening, as it should have been. Everyone was great, particularly Thomas Wolfson as Ludwig, the thespian hero on the make, and David Beaulieu as the hapless theater manager Ernest, who scored points just for resemblnig my old psycho roommate Steve*, but for me, I'm afraid everything paled next to Erica Ruff as temperamental diva Julia Jellicoe (again, in a small German theatrical company--Jellicoe). The last was utterly bewitching in both voice and performance, and it didn't hurt that she was gorgeous (the last shouldn't matter, but it ain't a perfect world, as we all know). Look out for that one, is all I'm saying.

*Steve not only believed FOX NEWS was "fair and balanced", but he also used those exact words completely without irony in an argument concerning said blight on reality. I can't help but mention, really, that he also once referred to a group of undergraduate females as "A-1 material." Kid had issues.