| . | 01/20/2002
Pinafore
By: Bruce-Michael Gelbert
The 28-year-old New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players (NYGASP), long in residence at Symphony Space, makes a debut, this January, at City Center, a house with a long musical history. (It was the New York City Opera's initial home.) The fare this month is a weekend apiece of the three most popular G & S operettas, "H.M.S. Pinafore," "The Pirates of Penzance," and "The Mikado."
I heard the second performance of "Pinafore," led by NYGASP Artistic Director Albert Bergeret, staged by Kristen Garver, and choreographed by Bill Fabris, and a cheerful and precisely polished account of the comedy of class difference and coincidence it was. Though I have qualms about the acoustics here, with the orchestra sounding muffled in the overture from as near as the eighth row, and found the amplification of the singers obtrusive at times, the move from an alternative uptown space to an established midtown one could
be an advantageous one. It will be interesting to see if the company returns permanently to its former quarters once renovations there are completed. (It will return there for "Patience" in May.)
Heading the "Pinafore" cast was Stephen Quint as a droll Sir Joseph Porter, kicked upstairs, despite a lack of qualifications, to become "ruler of the Queen's Navy," and entering looking decidedly seasick. The romantic leads were Kimilee Bryant, a sweet-voiced Josephine, and Michael Scott Harris, a Ralph (pronounced "Rafe") Rackstraw with a shaved head, who floated some secure high headtones. Richard Holmes, a bel canto Captain Corcoran, offered a cleanly sculpted "Fair Moon, to Thee I Sing," surely Gilbert and Sullivan's answer to Wagner's "Holder Abendstern" aria from "Tannhauser." Though not the expected booming contralto, Angela Smith, as Little Buttercup, proffered fully Verdian readings of her early outburst "Ralph! That name! Remorse! remorse!" and climactic, Azucena-like confessional narrative, "A Many Years Ago." Philip Reilly cast a fitting pall over the proceedings as the loathsome villain, Dick Deadeye. Victoria Devany (Cousin Hebe), Duane McDevitt (Bill Bobstay), Louis Dall'Ava (Bob Becket) and the ensemble
contributed to the merriment.
Quint, Bryant and Holmes' "Never Mind the Why and Wherefore," with its many encores, was a sparkling highlight. The bawdy line "And the tar who plows his daughter" and a reference to "don't ask, don't tell," when the Captain wound up as Sir Joseph's dance partner--neither originally in G & S--were, somehow, included here. The octet "Farewell, My Own" came off as a fittingly grand operatic concerted number.
The spirit of "Il Trovatore" hovers over this work, with its eleventh hour revelation of a fateful exchange of high- and lowborn babies at birth, and the duets--Bryant and Harris' fiery "Refrain, Audacious Tar," Smith and
Holmes' portentous "Things Are Seldom What They Seem," and Holmes and Reilly's ominous "Kind Captain, I've Important Information"--had properly Verdian breadth.
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