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Stage A matter of class
Gilbert and Sullivan purist Richard Sheldon insists on sticking to the collaborators' original concept in putting together H.M.S. Pinafore, a 19th century satire of England's social system.
[Publicity photo]
H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan’s first international hit. |
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 20, 2003
Richard Sheldon sees himself as a keeper of the flame for Gilbert and Sullivan in America. As founder, director and an actor for Opera A La Carte, Sheldon has toured G&S classics such as The Mikado, H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance for 30 years.
"My objective is to bring genuine Gilbert and Sullivan. I don't mess around with it. I'm too dedicated to it," Sheldon said last week, speaking from his office in Los Angeles.
This weekend, Sheldon's production of Pinafore is being presented as part of the Opera Tampa series at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
From 1875 to 1896, when librettist William Schwenck Gilbert and composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan were a team in London, they virtually defined a musical genre with fast-paced comic opera that, as Sheldon said, treated "a thoroughly farcical subject in a thoroughly serious manner."
Still, for all their worldwide popularity, G&S operettas go in and out of fashion. The last time there was anything resembling a boom was when The Pirates of Penzance was a hit on Broadway in 1981 with a cast including Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline. (The two also starred in the 1983 film.) Sheldon had mixed feelings about that production.
"The only good thing it had going for it was that it awakened in many younger minds what Gilbert and Sullivan was," he said. "It created a curiosity."
However, Sheldon hated the directorial liberties taken in the Joseph Papp production, the only commercial Broadway run for a G&S operetta. He especially objected to lifting numbers from other shows and working them into Pirates.
"Doing things like putting Sorry Her Lot from Pinafore into Pirates, why? Putting the patter trio from Ruddigore into Pirates, why? It just did not make any sense whatsoever."
Gilbert and Sullivan have long been a favorite of amateur theater groups, whose tendency often is to emphasize pie-in-the-face foolishness. Nothing could be more misguided, according to Sheldon.
"I don't mean to belittle amateur groups," he said. "Heaven knows, we've all done them in our day, and they serve a great purpose. My main concern is that they tend to get silly with it. Even some professional productions do.
"They try to get cute and do tasteless things and slapstick humor. It doesn't work; it does not work."
Sheldon, who rarely attends other G&S productions ("Chances are, I will come out angry about something, and I don't need that"), describes his approach as "100 percent purist."
"I'm not saying I'm stodgy; I'm not," he said. "Our productions are lively and fresh, but I adhere very much to what the original concept was. Anything I do I try to assess, would Gilbert approve, does it fit within the parameters of his concept? If the answer's yes, fine, away we go."
Several years ago, Gilbert and Sullivan got a boost in the movie Topsy-Turvy, a brilliant account by director Mike Leigh of their difficult partnership in the creation of The Mikado. Sheldon liked the movie, especially Jim Broadbent's performance as Gilbert, but disputed the portrayal by Allan Corduner of Sullivan.
"I don't think that really was Sullivan as I've learned what he was like," said Sheldon, who winced at a lurid episode of Sullivan in a bordello.
Sheldon, an Englishman transplanted to Southern California, got his start as a G&S impresario by presenting an evening of their songs and patter with a vocal quintet and a pianist in a Santa Monica dinner theater.
"We were booked in for two weeks and we stayed there for five months," he said. "That was in 1970. It just went on from there. In 1975 I mounted our first full production, which was The Mikado, and it's been onward and upward ever since."
H.M.S. Pinafore was one of Gilbert and Sullivan's big successes right from its 1878 premiere. It was their first international hit and a witty satire on class and politics embodied by the pompous Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty, played by Sheldon.
"Pinafore is a delightful social commentary," he said. "It's interesting how much of what Gilbert wrote is poignant today. Yes, some of it's dated and it's charmingly Victorian. The subtitle is The Lass That Loved a Sailor, the lass being the daughter of the captain and the sailor being a member of the crew. Socially, that was a no-no. Today, we have the same thing, but we just don't like to admit it or talk about it. Gilbert breaks down the barrier beautifully."
For the Opera A La Carte production, music director Alexander Ruggieri will conduct the Opera Tampa orchestra, a pickup group with 28 musicians for the operetta. The cast of 30 includes singers who have been with the company many years.
"It's a highly specialized art form, an operatic form, and the singers that I hire must have some operatic background, of a kind," Sheldon said. "I don't want the big Verdi singers, but I do like the Mozartean singers. Sullivan composed in a very similar manner to Mozart. Singers who have done a lot of Mozart can handle this material very well."
As an actor-producer leading a touring troupe, Sheldon is part of a vanishing breed on the theater scene. He sees G&S operettas as something of a throwback, too.
"Let's face it, Gilbert and Sullivan is a very elegant art from. It's very charming. It's very clever. And that's the way I treat it."
Theater preview
Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore has performances at 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets: $24.50-$59.50. (813) 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045 or www.tbpac.org.
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