‘Patience’ takes a bit of it to be fun
What the musical spoofs has long since passed from memory
Satire is a tricky thing. For topical humor to stand the test of time, it’s helpful for latter-day audiences to still be generally familiar with what was originally being satirized. That’s not so difficult when it’s something that continues in a generally recognizable form over time, such as politics, war or bureaucracy, but it’s considerably trickier when the object of ridicule is a fad that was popular 140 years ago.
REVIEW
That’s the challenge with “Patience,” the 1881 comic opera by William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan that Lamplighters Music Theatre is currently touring around the Bay Area. The satire pokes fun at the Aesthetic Movement that was all the rage in England in the late 19th century, celebrating decadence and “art for art’s sake.”
Barbara Heroux’s nicely animated staging opens with the curtain rising on “twenty love-sick maidens” (actually 16 of them) lounging around languidly in brightly colored fauxmedieval gowns by Melissa Wortman. The play is set in then-modern Victorian times; it’s just that these women are all swooning over an aesthetic poet who affects period dress as part of his public image of the brooding artist.
In fact the artist, Reginald Bunthorne (comically supercilious and preening F. Lawrence Ewing, alternating in the role with Chris Uzelac) is a fraud, his poetic persona a sham to attract women. But he has eyes only for the no-nonsense young milkmaid Patience (pricelessly blithe and forthright Jennifer Mitchell, alternating with Ellen Leslie), the only woman around who finds him perplexing and irritating.
Meanwhile, a troop of ever-so-proper Dragoon Guards returns to town, and the soldiers are bemused to find all their betrotheds besotted with this fancified fop. And when a rival poet comes to town, bemoaning his own irresistible beauty and spouting nurseryrhyme nonsense (achingly sincere Samuel Faustine, sharing the role with Jacob Botha), everyone’s jealousy reaches a fever pitch.
As ever, Gilbert’s script features some awfully droll paradox es, especially regarding the notion that love must be selfless, so loving someone to whom you’re actually attracted would be terribly selfish. Still, the humor isn’t nearly as nonstop as in other Gilbert and Sullivan classics, despite some bright comedic performances from the cast. Sullivan’s music is typically euphonious and sprightly, played deftly by the orchestra under the baton of David Möschler, but there are relatively few memorable ditties compared to some of the duo’s most popular works.
Still, there’s plenty to recommend about “Patience” in general, and this production in particular. Even if the particular object of parody is a craze that’s long forgotten now, and some of the finer details may be lost on us, the general theme of poseur artists and fickle lovers remains awfully amusing, and the mellifluous voices and comic flair of the rotating cast sparkle throughout.
Lamplighters’ dedication to keeping the Gilbert and Sullivan oeuvre in rotation is still going strong as the company enters its 65th year, and the Bay Area theatrical landscape is all the more fortunate for its efforts.