Gilbert and Sullivan
I recently watched Utopia Limited, so I have now seen every Gilbert and Sullivan operetta with one or two exceptions that I’m less interested in.
I wrote about Gilbert and Sullivan when I had a streaming ticket to the yearly festival a few years ago, so I’ll try not to cover too much of the same ground. Suffice it to say that I became a fan in the fifth or sixth grade when our teacher played the Kevin Kline movie version of Pirates of Penzance.
The plot of Utopia Limited is that the despot of an island has sent his daughter to England to study and is planning to implement what she has learned there. The local aristocracy is unhappy with changing anything. When she returns and her father makes the changes it all goes remarkably well, maybe too well. Their island becomes an actual utopia, but the military complains that the peace is driving them out of work. The doctors complain that the sanitation has nearly eliminated disease. The police complain that there is no crime. The daughter then remembers that she left out the most important part: party politics. For “any progress made by one party will naturally be undone when the other party comes to power.”
Utopia Limited has a start that’s a bit clunky, but overall I liked it, particularly that sadly funny ending. In some ways it’s almost too much of a good thing. Most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas have a few patter songs that are clever and funny. Utopia Limited is full of these songs and while that seems like it should be better it feels like there need to be some quasi serious songs to balance them.
All in all I think there are three tiers of Gilbert and Sullivan:
Tier 1:
The Mikado
Iolanthe
The Pirates of Penzance
HMS Pinafore
I feel like Iolanthe is the best play of the lot, and it has a patter song about insomnia. Though I think The Mikado has the best combination of libretto and music. Penzance is very nearly as good as The Mikado. HMS Pinafore feels like the first of their works where it all comes together. I sort of think Pinafore is to Gilbert and Sullivan as Meddle is to Pink Floyd. It’s where they really figure it out and then produce three nigh perfect works following it (okay Pink Floyd’s albums come 1-2-3 after Meddle and I’m skipping Patience and Princess Ida for Gilbert and Sullivan, it’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s what I’m going with. My blog, my rules.)
Tier 2:
Ruddigore
Utopia Limited
The Gondoliers
The Yeomen of the Guard
Ruddigore I think got unfairly maligned because it had the misfortune of following the Mikado and anything was likely to seem not as good. But I also think it’s uneven and gets a little long in the tooth. Still it is funny and has a patter trio that’s so good that when Penzance was revived for Broadway with Kevin Kline, they added Ruddigore’s patter song with some changed lyrics including Ruth singing: “So we sing this song from Ruddigore because what we sing just doesn’t matter.
The others in this tier are similar. They’re uneven but have lots of good moments and several clever songs.
Tier 3:
The Sorcerer
Trial by Jury
These are early works and feel a lot cornier. Trial by Jury is just one act, but feels like two. That said they each have a good patter song: the song about how the judge gained his position in Trial by Jury is excellent and since watching The Sorcerer if anyone every says “strawberry” or “jam” to me I end up singing “The eggs and the ham and the strawberry jam” over and over.
I recommend watching them all.
