calimac

... as I said to the person behind me in line as we commiserated over the prospect of spending what turned out to be nearly 3 hours sitting in the slow-broiling sun this afternoon to watch the Stanford Savoyards' production of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Apparently the indoor theaters were not available, so to a patio adjacent to the Business School we went.

Although the sun did beat, and though I left my hat on, and was wearing a long-sleeve shirt, I expect I'll be sorry later, it wasn't all that hot, and a breeze was blowing, strong enough to keep knocking the minimal scenery over. Surprisingly, the acoustics were pretty good, with intermittent amplification.

We went to see this one for the directorial concept, continuing their recent SF media themes. Having done a Firefly-themed Pirates of Penzance and an ST:TNG-themed H.M.S. Pinafore, with the characters sort of semi-mapped on to characters from the shows, they've moved on to Patience, which parodies 1880s aesthetic poets and their groupies; Stanford has repackaged them as media fans. Bunthorne and his female followers are Trekkies: they describe themselves as cosplayers, and are in the sense that they dress up as specific characters, but there's no attempt to depict role-playing. Bunthorne himself wears Spock ears and a TOS blueshirt, and, of course, his poetry is fanfic. Patience, the long-suffering dairymaid, has of course nothing to do with this, and wears a denim skirt and - in a further G&S reference - a t-shirt from Basingstoke City College (regrettably, there appears to be no such institution in reality).

It gets more fun when the rival poet, Grosvenor, shows up and turns out to be a fan of another TV show altogether, dressing up as the Eleventh Doctor (the one with the bow tie and fez, if you're as poorly up-to-date on this as I am). When the groupies desert Bunthorne for Grosvenor, they recostume themselves as various Dr. Who characters, including one Tardis and one Dalek, which is about as far as I go in recognizing subsidiary Dr. Who characters. Both sets of costumes are elaborate and imaginative, though I vote for the Dr. Who ones as much nicer. Lady Angela in her Trek guise is made up as Seven of Nine, and a less flattering costume on a conventionally attractive woman would be hard to imagine. Lady Jane, in accordance with the plot, sticks with her Trek guise, and "accompanies" "Silvered is the Raven Hair" on a Vulcan lute.

Some of the dialogue and lyrics are rewritten, but not systematically. The best changed lines were not specific to the setting and were in the patter song outlining the recipe for a Heavy Dragoon:

Alfred Lord Tennyson, and that chap Poe
Rowling and Tolkien and Henry Thoreau

and

Flavor of Hamlet from Shakespeare, a touch of him
Gilbert and Sullivan, not very much of them

You never know what you're going to get in amateur G&S, and this was, in musical and dramatic performance, one of the best productions I've ever seen from Stanford Savoyards. The chorus was strong, particularly the women, and for once intelligently choreographed. Most of the principals were excellent singers, Patience (Diane Squires) and Angela (Elizabeth Corson) in particular: their duet ("He was a little boy") was outstanding. Both felt like strong characters instead of the wishy milkwaters often portrayed. Bunthorne (Johnny Villar) knew the rhythm to his big soliloquy better than the conductor did. Grosvenor (Carmello Tringali), though a good singer, shone even more as an actor. His slow, serenely deadpan way of speaking underlined Grosvenor's fatuous self-regard to the extent that his introductory scene was the funniest performance of it that I've seen. The Colonel (Jeffrey Lampert) got his patter out with admirable clarity. Lady Jane (Joanne Newman) was genuinely older than the other women, and genuinely full of gusto.

I'm up for more, just not outdoors again.