Iolanthe

Decisions, decisions. Tamburlaine or The Rain Never Falls? Murder in the Cathedral or Country Wife or what have you? Whatever your choice, good people, please don't neglect Iolanthe: the new Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players' production is well acted, imaginatively directed, and very, very funny.

All this one has come to expect from the G & S Players; they possess the singular ability of fashioning entertainment out of dull nineteenth-century spoofs. But because of the ridiculously large number of playlets that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote, they can only occasionally hit upon an operetta that has any humor of its own. Iolanthe, happily, is such an operetta: W.S. Gilbert, for once, lampooned a group he actually knew by sight--instead of pirates and Japanese--and the result, coupled with Sir Arthur's magnificent mock-hymns, was a grandly devastating jibe at the Victorian Establishment. Peers sweep around the stage, admitting, grandly, at they are doing "nothing in particular"; demand humble submission from the Lower Middle Classes and intone a soulful invocation the watery joys of Blue Blood.

Mr. John Parker, the director of the current production, has taken full advantage of the ridiculousness of the situation. His peers have scowls that could wither Mao, and their gait is eminently noble. Even more importantly, two of them are excellent comic actors. Mr. David S. Cole is the most susceptible of highly susceptible Chancellors--a perfectly dirty old man, he totters about, ogling near-sightedly at his wards in Chancery, and kicking fretfully at the traces of a ruined dignity.

And Mr. Samuel Abbott has transformed himself into a most excellently bloated and insufferable Tolloller. He has managed, somehow, to blend the most absurd elements of Oscar Wilde, Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov into one vast horror of inane snobbery and scented incompetence. Only Mr. Abbott's Tolloller could have successfully produced, as he did, the quintessential Gilbertian line: "We were boys together;--at least I was."

The fairy ring is perhaps somewhat less successful (and the girls are not helped by an unfortunate etymological process which has added an unlooked for ribaldry to the operetta). Only Celia (Miss Elinor Martin) has the wild-eyed boredom proper to a group of immortals who cannot determine why they bother to trip their completely meaningless measures. And Miss Colleen Ryan, the Queen of the Fairies, despite her attractive contralto voice, lacks the heavy authority of a true monarch.

In smaller roles, I can find only praise for Mr. David Adam, a profound and sonorous Private Willis; for Mr. Barnet Skolnick, a portly Strephon, made up (for some reason) to look like Franz Joseph Haydn; for Miss Kay Churchill, a veritable Little Mary Sunshine of a Phyllis; and for Miss Sarita Matney, Iolanthe herself, who is a most pleasant and motherly fairy.

And, oh yes, the costumes are most decorous, and the sound of a real orchestra, instead of those inevitable two pianos, is most welcome. Please (of course, I really needn't beg you) go see Iolanthe. It's obviously the most enjoyable show around.