ON THE RADAR: Princess Ida

Agassiz Theatre. Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m., Thursday 8 p.m. Through Saturday, April 16. Evenings $12/$10 regular, $8/$6 students and seniors; matinees $10/$8 regular, $6/$4 students and seniors; Thursday show $4 with student ID. Tickets available at the Harvard Box Office.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players (HRGSP) opened the comic opera Princess Ida yesterday, at Agassiz Theater in Radcliffe Yard. The HRGSP spring production is the biggest budget theatrical performance on campus next to the Hasty Pudding.

The operetta, which presents a fantastical and ultimately dismissive view of feminism and women’s education, is particularly relevant in light of the recent controversy that has rocked the university regarding President Lawrence H. Summers’ remarks on women and science.

Princess Ida differs from most Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Gilbert and Sullivan were famous for popularizing the opera with their simple prose and topsy-turvy plots. Not only is Princess Ida written in blank verse, its characters and basic plot line are taken from a quite serious poem by Tennyson.

The operetta, however, like most of Gilbert and Sullivan’s productions, is a farce. Women’s education and feminism in general are made to look ridiculous throughout the operetta. For this and many other reasons, Princess Ida is rarely produced nowadays.

The HRGSP produce an operetta twice a year and most operas cycle through once every four years. Princess Ida has not been performed at Harvard since 1996 and the production board, which decided to put on the operetta before the controversy surrounding Summers’ remarks, was worried it might fall out of circulation.

Princess Ida tells of a women’s school in the Castle Adamant, which teaches philosophy, science, and the vagaries of men. Princess Ida, who is betrothed to Prince Hilarion contrary to her wishes, is president of the university. Prince Hilarion, intent on marring her, goes to the castle with a few friends to try to win her over to him.

Despite the many obstacles to successfully producing Princess Ida, director Charles I. Miller ’08 believes the operetta is “a gem.” Miller says he was offended by the apparent misogynism of the operetta, but saw in the Tennyson poem a way around it. Synthesizing the Tennyson poem and the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Miller brought lines from the poem into the operetta to change the tone a bit, especially at the end.

The HRGSP production of Princess Ida is bound to be an exciting and controversial event. Miller stresses, however, that “though the controversy will certainly make things more exciting, the production will stand on its own.”