pameladean | "Utopia, Ltd., or The Flowers of Progress"

David and Lydy and I went out last night to see the Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company do what's certainly the most obscure G&S production I've ever seen. The program was very amusing, explaining that Gilbert and Sullivan had written the thing while they weren't exactly speaking to one another, so that Gilbert kept putting in the entire kitchen sinkful of gimmicks and long passages of dialogue, and then Sullivan would "retaliate" with long orchestral pieces, songs, and dance scenes. The current company had spent two years revising the thing to be playable.

We enjoyed it very much, although I liked the words more than the music, as a rule. The operetta is set in the near future for G&S, the 1920's, so the characters from England were all wearing real twenties fashions. The chorus was a batch of barefoot women in sarongs and barefoot men in sarongs and Hawaiian shirts, with one or two brightly-colored but not Hawaiian shirts as ballast. Utopia is ruled by an absolute monarch, but he can't actually do much because his two chief counselors have at their beck and call the Royal Exploder, who is charged with blowing up the king if he becomes too despotic. "Despotism with Dynamite." I liked the character of the King a great deal. His counselors were making him write scurrilous stories about his own conduct to print in the local gossip rag.

The King has sent his three daughters to be educated in England, and they come home again complete with their very proper governess, who is in love with the King, who returns the favor. However, so long as he does nothing about the author of the scurrilous stories, she won't marry him. The eldest daughter, Zara, is in love with one of the four members of the army that she's brought back with her as part of a project to bring examples of all the kinds of people who have made England great. This fellow was played by the same actor who played the wandering minstrel/lost prince in "The Mikado." I found this curiously distracting. Captain Corcoran from "H.M.S. Pinafore" made an appearance; we haven't done the research to discover whether this was the fault of Gilbert and Sullivan or of the revisers. It was nicely done and well received; the Captain made a "never" statement and was obliged, in the time-honored fashion, to qualify it.

Princess Zara and her entourage proceed to Anglicize the island. I wondered, during the intermission, whether all the sarong-wearers would turn up in twenties costumes too, but they retained their sarongs, only adding to them such objects as a pair of yellow galoshes, a pair of elbow-length white gloves, an umbrella, various plaids, a bowler hat, and a tennis racket, croquet mallet, and another sporting implement that I can't recall the game of, with which they pushed about a small wooden football. Although it would have been easy enough to play this so that the natives looked stupid, in fact they looked quite competent and made the various accoutrements of civilized English life look silly, instead.

The grand finale before the intermission was a rousing chorus celebrating the Joint Stock Company Act of 1862, as Utopia is incorporated into a limited-liability corporation. In the second act, it's revealed that every citizen of Utopia is also now a limited-liability corporation, and not a baby is born but gets its little prospectus. This situation frees the King of any obligation to heed his counselors, because, as he explains to them, a limited-liability corporation may be wound up, but it cannot be blown up.

While various romantic situations develop, the counselors raise the populace against the King by pointing out how many people are suffering from the Anglicization of Utopia: all neighboring islands have given up warfare because the army and navy of Utopia are so well regarded; doctors have no business because of the improvements in sanitation; and so on. In a scene that I strongly suspect was added, but one can never be at all sure with Gilbert and Sullivan, Princess Zara says that she has forgotten one important element of Anglicization: the two-party system. She distributes large numbers of red and blue ribbon rosettes, and explains that now the army and navy will be in disarray, doctors will have plenty of business, and all will be prosperity. Hurrahs and dancing.

There was the usual misogynistic bit where a couple of gentlemen from England muse on the properties of the proper English girl and talk the two younger princesses out of displaying them, but it wasn't as awful as some G&S can be. The King's dilemma regarding the scurrilous stories, and the huge tribute to the Joint Stock Company Act of 1862, were my favorite parts.

The second act was rather disjointed, but it was all great fun.

P.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sovay

I liked the character of the King a great deal. His counselors were making him write scurrilous stories about his own conduct to print in the local gossip rag.

He and Lady Sophy make for one of the more awesome couples in G & S.

From:

pameladean

Yes indeed. No girlish nonsense THERE.

This Lady Sophy could perhaps have been a bit snarkier, but their scenes together were pretty good anyway.

P.

From:

gwyneira.livejournal.com

Captain Corcoran from "H.M.S. Pinafore" made an appearance

That's as written in the original, complete with the "What, never?" bit -- to my knowledge, it's the only time G&S ever had a character from one operetta appear in another one.

I do wish our local company would quit doing the better-known operettas so often (they've done The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance twice each in the last ten years, plus HMS Pinafore once) and do Utopia Limited or The Grand Duke, neither of which I know nearly as well as any of the others.

From:

tamago.livejournal.com

There's a reason for that. The "big three" make money. Our local company compromised. For a three-show season, they used to do one of the big three (Mikado, Pinafore or Pirates) to make money, one of the middle tier (Yeoman, Gondoliers, Iolanthe, etc...) hoping to break even, and then one total experiment, expecting to bomb, but hoping to "educate" the audience a little so that the next time it comes around, more people will want to see it. Then they branched out into more "light opera" and less "G&S" and I think that formula went out the window.

"Utopia, Ltd., or The Flowers of Progress"

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags