Cover image: Patience (Anna Galavis) and Grosvenor (Colin Briskey) deciding they must part (Photo: Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society)
This year the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s annual offering was Patience, through July 13 – 22 at the Bagley Wright Theatre, and the production was one of their best. Although Patience is one of the more absurd stories William Gilbert concocted—a spoof of the aesthetic cult which had seized London by storm in the 1870s and of which Oscar Wilde was a prime example—it lends itself to amusing characterizations which are all the funnier the more preposterous they are.
Briefly, the story is that of two exaggeratedly aesthetically behaving poets, the bevy of middle-aged ladies who fancy themselves in love with them—though not both at once—the refreshingly down-to-earth but naïve milkmaid, Patience, who both poets pursue, and a bunch of heavy dragoons in scarlet jackets to whom the lovesick ladies were engaged the year prior. Everything is sorted out by the end, with all except one poet satisfactorily partnered up.
Lady Jane (Dawn Padula) taking out her frustrations on a double bass (Photo: Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society)
Suffice it to say that this production shines in its singing, its acting, its choreography, set and costume design and stage direction, not to mention orchestrally, and is delightful from start to finish. This is the company’s 64th season, and quite a few of the longtime members’ names are missing from cast and production staff, people who have been pillars of the organization for decades. It is a relief to note that the new arrivals seem to have imbibed the essence of G & S, including in particular stage director Ruben Van Kempen, whose vision has made this production such a strong and colorful whole.
As the poet Reginald Bunthorne, Darrell J. Jordan’s expressive baritone is only matched by his equally expressive face and acting as he copes with the obtrusive attentions of the “twenty-lovesick maidens” all appreciably long in the tooth. These are all dressed in flowing Grecian style robes of blue. Anna Galavis as Patience has a clear true soprano and looks here as though she is in her teens, though she has more than a decade of singing opera and musicals under her belt.
Reginald Bunthorne (Darrell J. Jordan) failing to sufficiently impress Anna Galavis’s Patience (Photo: Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society)
Seattle G & S has found it hard some years to find the right alto to undertake what is usually an important role in all G & S comic operas, but here they have a jewel, and let’s hope she continues to perform with the company. She is Dawn Padula, as Lady Jane. Colin Briskey as the other poet, Archibald Grosvenor, has to be equally precious but in different manner from Bunthorne, and he succeeds. The soldiers are a complete contrast and foil, sensible officers of the Crown.
Members of the cast strike a pose (Photo: Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society)
The whole product is lively, and Beth Orme’s choreography ensures that the lovesick ladies are living up to their intentions while striking pseudo-Greek poses, while Craig B. Wollam’s set matches the romantic pseudo-Gothic style of the day, including headless pillars and large urns as well as mountainous scenery. Bernard Kwiram, conducting the orchestra behind the set (there’s a screen up on the balcony wall showing him to the singers) paces the musicians and the music well without drowning anyone, although words are often hard to hear clearly. This matters less as the gestures say clearly what’s being sung.
Al in all, it’s a production in the best G & S style. Next year we get Princess Ida, very topical today as then on women’s rights.
