Yeomen of the Guard

SOME CRITIC has said that the basic action of comedy on the stage goes something like this: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, some obstacle crops up in their path. Boy surmounts obstacle, gets girl, they live happily ever after. Yeomen of the Guard, like almost everything in the G & S, follows the stock comic path--for the hero and heroine. Unlike the rest of G & S, though, the romantic crises in the lives of the minor characters are never resolved, and Yeomen comes closer to tragicomedy than anything else the two ever wrote.

Close, but no cigar. For the lack of resolution of the crisis, the seemingly unhappy endings to the love lives of the minor characters are unsatisfactory theater. The play itself is too long, too complicated, and far from inspired in many spots. Even the patter song is less than amusing. In short, the whole show could use a good play doctor to tighten up both acts. The Gilbert and Sullivan style is recognizable to the point of obviousness: usually, however, Gilbert's quick with and Sullivan's facile orchestration make their operettas work. Yeomen of the Guard, like Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, never quite gets off the ground.

The Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players have chosen, tis pity, to do Yeomen straight and uncut, complete with the overwritten first act and the overlong second. What they have done, they have done well, sometimes even brilliantly. If only they had done some editing as well.

THIS IS not to say that there are not some bright spots in Yeomen, of course, or to imply that the G & S Players have not taken advantage of them. Much of Yeomen's semitragic ending exists merely as a vehicle for the lyrical tragic love duet. "I Have a Song to Sing, Oh", and Karl Deirup and Chalyce Brown carry it off movingly. Deirup's expressive little mime during the number is unusually effective, quite touching really. Brown's voice is in top form for her part.

Darcy Pullam's Dame Carruthers has a comic flair, and a certain verisimilitude as an old hag. Edith Marshall is a credible nymphet as Phoebe. Danius Turek as Colonel Fairfax, the hero of the piece, performs rather well, and sings beautifully. The scenery, by Randall Darwall, is by far the most original G & S has used in years, centered around a stylized, oversized scaffold which takes most of the action.

Gilbert and Sullivan worked at cross purposes in the composition of Yeomen, and it shows in the finished work. Sullivan had decided, when he began to write, to sing a slightly greater theme, but Gilbert turned his pen, as usual, to satire, and humor. The result is a hodge-podge of conflicting plot lines, badly integrated score, and general confusion. When the Yeomen barcs its steel, we uncomfortable feel, and nothing short of a major revision would make us any more at home with the piece.

IT IS ALMOST time now for a critical reappraisal of Gilbert and Sullivan. Willi Apel has referred to their work as "the highest point attained in English dramatic music since Purcell," but this judgement can certainly not have been meant to apply to all of their works uniformly. What may be true of Iolanthe is not true of Yeomen, what may be true of Trial by Jury is not necessarily true of the Sorcerer. The determination to run through the G & S repertoire over and over agiin, the way Channel 56 runs through Basil Rathbone's 11 Sherlock Holmes films, may not be entirely justified. Perhaps G & S companies should drop the clunkers from their repertoire, and substitute other light opera for them, as Harvard G & S repertoire is beginning to show its age, and might well be allowed to die a graceful death.