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Patience is a virtue at Courthouse
By Bill Rodriguez
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You’d think that Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience would be rollicking up the stage more often than it is. It pokes delicious, relentless fun at pretentiousness that we still readily recognize, yet it’s no more fattening than H.M.S. Pinafore. Courthouse Light Opera, in West Kingston, is demonstrating the operetta’s comic virtues in their usual fine style. Being made fun of on this occasion is the late-19th-century aestheticism movement in literature. Vying for the swoony affections of a village’s maidens are two poets: Reginald Bunthorne (David W. Price) — modeled after Oscar Wilde — and Archibald Grosvenor (Ken McPherson) — as in Algernon Swinburne. (Sir William Gilbert specified that the first was the "fleshy" poet and the other the "idyllic" one, but here the physical types are reversed. Price has a well-deserved lock on the silliest roles of this troupe, and McPherson gives very good mock sincerity.) The mutual object of their affections is pretty milkmaid Patience (Joanne Mouradjian). Her particular fatuousness is to steadfastly maintain that "love, to be pure, must be absolutely unselfish." That’s a policy fairly thrumming with emotional dissonance, so rest assured that complications come fast and curious. A cast of thousands, or close to it, throngs about, providing a concerned populace and chamber ensemble. "Twenty Love-Sick Maidens We" is sung by no fewer than 17, and there are nearly a dozen dragoon guards in full uniform scuffing about after them like moony boys. Mouradjian has a lot of wide-eyed fun with the fatuous milkmaid. Poor Patience is so innocent that she is baffled as to why Bunthorne wants her love, since he is not a relative like her dear great-auntie. More disquieting as a suitor is Grosvenor, especially when she recognizes him as a playmate from childhood and her one true, platonic, love. But she cannot in good conscience love him in return, because she likes him — therefore her love would be selfish. (Patience’s logic is consistent, if mind-boggling, since she eventually succumbs to Bunthorne’s overtures because she dislikes him and thereby can love him. Got that?) Price plays Bunthorne with a giddy world-weariness that befits the poem he scribbles and reads to the maidens. Titled "Hollow," it laments the emptiness of existence, the verbal equivalent of the back of his hand to his forehead. McPherson has as much fun with Grosvenor, because he gets to complain about being the perfection of beauty personified. Though the subtitle of the operetta is "or, Bunthorne’s Bride," Grosvenor and Patience get more tune time, with such ditties as "Prithee, Pretty Maiden" and "Tho’ to Marry You Would Be Very Selfish." Four of the "Rapturous Maidens," who trail the poets like a gaggle of famished hens, have singing roles. They are well played by Joetta McKenna, Valerie Remillard, Diane Petit, and Andrea Theroux. The last is Lady Jane, a holdout for the love of Bunthorne when the other maidens have abandoned him for his rival. Theroux makes her literally a hanger-on at one point, clinging to his leg as he distractedly moves away. In Act II it is aging spinster Jane who gets to sing the solo "Sad Is That Woman’s Lot." In director mode, Price had Jane bemoan her loss of beauty with some amusing props, from miniature violin to stand-up bass. The funniest song of the lot is "The Magnet and the Churn." Grosvenor, in a delightfully apt metaphor as the rapturous maidens trail in his wake, sings about a hardware shop magnet that attracts scissors and pins but has its heart set, to no avail, on a silver milk churn. Apart from the first-rate folderol — which I defy any G&S fan to not enjoy — the singing, even in chorus, is quite good. The trained voices in the major roles are a treat, especially Mouradjian’s crystalline soprano as Patience. The thunderous baritone of Fred Scheff, as a duke and dragoon lieutenant, is in an inspiring class of its own. The theater space in the Courthouse Center for the Arts provides a decent view for everyone, since the stage is high enough and there are no seats farther back than six rows. Set and costumes complement the atmosphere nicely. A violin and flute or clarinet, led by music director Dale Munschy on piano, provide quite more than competent accompaniment. I look forward to Courthouse Light Opera doing their single summer Gilbert and Sullivan production like some people look forward to the beach. This sunny experience is much more fun, and you don’t have to bring the SPF30.
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