New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; Sept 27, 2005
Written between The Pirates of Penzance and Iolanthe, G&S’s Patience is not quite up to the standard of those two, H.M.S. Pinafore, or The Mikado, but it’s still filled with good characterizations, some swell patter songs and duets, a fine solo or two for soprano and a solo for contralto and cello about the miseries of getting fat. It is a delicious send up of a certain type of aesthete, based on the young (not the older, out-ed) Oscar Wilde and his “rival,“ Algernon Charles Swinburne, and the City Opera’s production, first seen at Glimmerglass last year, is a feast for eye and ear, ideally capturing the pre-Raphaelite decadence and pretensions of the era with almost brutal honesty, which is probably just what W.S. Gilbert was hoping for.
Director Tazewell Thompson has created a marvelously fuddy Victorian world for the “ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical” Reginald Bunthorne (the Wilde figure) and the twenty, pining “love-sick maidens” who adore him and his rival. Donald Eastman’s set is a white revolving mansion suitable for group swooning, which, when turned, introduces us first to the maidens’ former fiancés, the dragoons, and revolves frequently and in different manners. It’s both charming and useful. With vivid costumes by Merrily Murray-Walsh which reference both the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley and the overly-sensuous art nouveau lines typical of the period set against the white mansion, the entire visual aspect of the production is a delight.
And the singing actors work up a storm. Broadway and London star Michael Ball is a fantastical Bunthorne in his multi-colored brocade and brown ringlets. His diction is perfect and he tosses out his too-witty, too-articulate lines with great irony and sings on key. Lanky Kevin Burdette also almost overdoes it as Archibald, matching Ball in exquisite absurdity – watching the two of them prance about is something to behold. Tonna Miller sings Patience, who is in love with both poets on-and-off (she feels that they’re both perfect and if she loves a perfect man, she’s being selfish, and to be selfish is to not really love, etc) with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that tells us everything about her milkmaid character. Her soprano is as clear as a bell. The cast’s other standout is the dark-voiced Lady Jane of Myrna Paris, who personifies a type of perfection in discontented gloom: she’s aging, overweight and just plain – and she sings about it deliciously. Gary Thor Wedow leads the NYCO Orchestra and Chorus with biting precision and enormous fun.
Try not to miss this show – it will be shown on again on September 30th, the matinee of October 2nd and October 5th.
Robert Levine
