Jests, Jibes and Cranks

A LOVE-SICK MAN is a helpless ninny, marriage is a trap baited with blackmail, the jester is bound to end up with his head on the chopping block--quite a few gloomy aphorisms might be gleaned from The Yeomen of the Guard. If the show's music--with its operatic flourishes--is among Arthur Sullivan's grandest, the libretto certainly represents W.S. Gilbert at his most despondent.

For all its grimness, there is no real heavy in Yeomen of the Guard--the only out and out villain, the venal relative responsible for sending noble Colonel Fairfax to the Tower on a trumped-up charge of sorcery, never even appears. The plot complications arise instead from the ironic unfolding of two different schemes initiated by the forces of good.

While Fairfax's friend Sgt. Meryll and Meryll's amorous daughter Phoebe plot his escape, the convicted sorcerer resolves to deprive his kinsman of the pecuniary benefits of his treachery by wedding an unknown bride before his execution. The rescue comes too late to prevent the marriage of Fairfax to Elsie, who was previously affianced to the jester Jack Point. Once escaped, Fairfax unhappily finds himself "free, yet in fetters held," and the plot begins to unravel in usual Gilbert and Sullivan fashion.

Or perhaps not so usual. There's something decidedly peculiar about a comic opera in which no one's final happiness is convincing. Of the three marriages in the show, two spring from coercion, and the third--the wedding of Fairfax and Elsie--originates as a strategem to defraud an undeserving kinsman, proceeds only through bribery of the bride and, most importantly, culminates in the rejection and desolation of two abundantly worthy suitors.

If the picture of life suggested by The Yeomen of the Guard is a somber one, it is superbly painted by the Gilbert and Sullivan Players in a production which surpasses even their own invariably high standards. The show begins slowly, unimpressively, as the groundwork of the plot is carefully laid. But the momentum picks up for good when Elsie (Ellen Burkhardt) and Jack Point (Terry Knickerbocker) team in a lovely duet that tells the sad tale of "the merryman and his maid ("I have a song to sing, O!"); in this evocatively staged number, lyrics, music, choreography and voices blend into a moving statement of the main terms of the drama--the conflict between lord and jester for the fair maiden's hand and heart.

A CONSERVATIVE production by G & S criteria, The Yeomen of the Guard is happily bereft of the gimmickry and contemporary updating that characterized recent versions of the more popular Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore; the audience's relative unfamiliarity with Yeomen has allowed director John Campbell Butman to forswear innovation, since whatever happens on stage will be new. Butman also abandons much of the elaborate stylization which shaped the performances in this fall's production of Iolanthe, encouraging his leads to act with greater naturalism and leaving the contorting and caricaturing to the lesser characters.

These minor characters are not quite as pivotal or as interesting as in some other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas--there's nothing here to compare, for example, with the posturings of the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe or Katisha's ravings in The Mikado--but they still offer marvelous opportunities for comic mugging. Scott Meadow turns in a sharply defined performance as Wilfred Shadbolt, the "assistant tormentor" who eventually wins Phoebe's hand (but not her heart). A typical Gilbert and Sullivan "light heavy," Meadow's Wilfred is too ridiculously self-important and gullible to be really threatening. Carol Flynn also has a few funny moments as awesome Dame Carruthers, responding rapturously to Sgt. Meryll's pained wooing.

The excellence of this production is due, above all, to the conspicuous talents of the four leads. The role of Elsie, the youthful ideal of maidenhood, is a flat one to begin with, and Ellen Burkhardt offers little more than freshness and smiles to fill it out; but her voice is so stirring and powerful that it overwhelms any deficiencies in her acting. By contrast, Linda Anne Kirwan is a gifted comedienne, handling the part of Pheobe with real comic flair and singing well, if less vigorously than her rival. Roberto Gaston makes an extraordinarily winning Fairfax, with his broad toothy grin, strong tenor and charming Gilbertian sense of the absurd.

But the acting laurels for the show clearly belong to Terry Knickerbocker, who delivers a lustrous performance as Jack Point. Possessed of a "pretty wit," Point is a man paid to be funny while all the time bleeding inside. Knickerbocker's command of the role is nothing short of masterful--every gesture, every expression is just right. Excluded from the circle of marital contentment at the end, he endows his final appeal to Elsie with a poignant melancholy that is riveting.

BACKING UP the cast, the orchestra does a yeoman-like job of performing Sullivan's score. Aside from Point and Elsie's ballad, the best numbers in the show include Point's cynical patter song ("Oh a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon"), "Were I thy bride," during which Phoebe dallies with Wilfred while her father steals his keys, and "A man who would woo a fair maid," Fairfax's own testament to his success as a lover.

The choreography in Yeomen of the Guard is mostly small scale, involving the leads rather than the chorus, but what there is of it is good. In fact, the two choruses of village maids and yeomen are not particularly important--both sing well, articulating clearly, but singing is really all they get to do.

This singing, dancing and comic posturing all takes place against the background of Joe Mobilia's solid-seeming set, which recreates the look of the infamous Tower on one side of the stage, and of a 16-century English village on the other. Linda Beyer's costumes demarcate character with style and color; especially stunning is the apparel she designed for bride and bridegroom--matching outfits of forest green velvet and light green silk, evoking images of verdant woods and fertility.

The only thing really wrong with G & S's Yeomen of the Guard is that it will be so hard to get tickets for it. Usher your way in if you have to. G & S, like Jack Point, are ready to "jest you, jibe you, crank you, wrack you and riddle you," and the tremendous finesse with which they manage the whole operation will leave you as exhilarated as poor Jack Point is sad.