Hello.

Hmm, I thought it would be you . . . .

Hi!

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Gilbert O'Sullivan ... lets see ... he sang ...umm ... er ...

"Alone Again (Naturally)".

The most whiny, self-pity filled song of all time.

"In a little while from now
If I'm not feeling any less sour.
I promise myself
To treat myself
And visit a nearby tower,
And climbing to the top
Will throw myself off..."

I keep wanting to chant, "Jump! Jump! Jump!"

He also had another hit called "Claire." I have no way of knowing if it's as annoying as "Alone Again (Naturally)." (If the song's any indication, no wonder he's alone.)

I always LIKED that song … especially since before I was "enlightened" … I thought it was a Beatles tune … (just compare the voices in Alone Again, (Naturally) and Get Back to Where You Once Belong, and you'll see why I thought it was a Beatles song at first)

I used to like it, Derf. Now I wish O'Sullivan all the luck in the world with his suicide attempt. The song's gotten to be real annoying to me.

I see yer point ... pardner

Keep in mind mein fruend that I'm not putting down your taste in music. (Sure sounds like it, though, don't it?) I guess when I was younger, I related to the song. But these days I'm not as insecure or as depressed about being single as I was. I'm more reconciled with the idea that I may never find the right woman for me. I think I'm too much a lone wolf for it anyway. 'Sides, I can't imagine any woman putting up with me for too long.

Oh yeah. I don't know whether to curse you out, Derf, or Snickerdoodle. But last night I had that effing song stuck in my mind all night. I was getting to the point where I was ready to find that tower Gilbert sang about and climb it myself.

Oops! I thought folks would be discussing THE MIKADO and D'oyle Carte...

Me too, Gary. The singer called himself Gilbert O'Sullivan after all.

Padawan, if this is part IV, where are parts I, II, and III? I seem to have missed them somewhere.

With cat-like tread, upon my way I'll steal.

Gary B - That was what the intention of this board was. It was *hijacked!*
Part III is on the Kitchen Sink, Parts I and II no longer exist. None of them are really important to be read before posting here.

Thanks Padawan, I found Part III but was wondering where I and II were.

Good to see other people posting here. So, is anyone acquainted with the works beyond H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance (the "Big Three")?

Well, I am...but I have the feeling you know that already. ;-)

Butch, much of the other G&S threads consist of me going on about auditions in the U of Mich G&S Society, henceforth to be known as UMGASS, and then later being all disappointed and stuff because I didn't get cast.

But guess what? There's a G&S group at U of Chicago, and they're staging The Mikado next quarter! Perhaps I'll finally have a lucky break...

Good luck Lea!

Since you're in a G & S Society maybe you can answer something for me.

In the versions of "The Mikado" I've seen, the song "I've Got a Little List" often gets new lyrics reflecting people currently in the news. I've always thought this caused a production to quickly become dated rather quickly. It's my only complaint about a Canadian production I taped off cable several years ago. Is this changing of lyrics always/often done? I realize I may be in the minority in my poor opinion of this practice.

Padawan,
I've got somewhere in my collection a copy of Yeoman of the Guard (is that title right?) from the "Complete Gilbert & Sullivan" series from several years ago. This was the one hosted by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. I saw many of the shows and remember liking "The Sorceror" a good deal.
I wish PBS would run it again.

Ooh, "Yeomen" is one of my favorites. "Sorcerer" is fun, too -- I did tech for it a couple of years ago. (It's quite a challenging show for techies!)

As for updating the list, I wouldn't say it's always done, but it's done frequently. The last UMGASS Mikado did it, although we kept the original first verse. Since stage productions are a far more ephemeral thing than films, I don't have a problem with it, especially if you've got a good updater, but a lot of G&S purists don't like it.

Incidentally, Gilbert himself altered the lyrics at times -- there are lots of variants for the "singular anomaly" line.

There are other songs that tend to get their lyrics changed, too -- the Heavy Dragoon number in "Patience," or the second verse of the Fairy Queen's song in "Iolanthe" (Padawan told me of a production in which the FQ, made up to resemble Queen Victoria, apostrophizes Mr. Brown, a great idea because it's both appropriate to the period -- though it would never have been said in 1882! -- and, thanks to the wonders of cinema, more understandable than the original's reference to Captain Shaw). And there are plenty of others.

(But my favorite topical joke in an UMGASS production was in last year's H.M.S. Pinafore: when Sir Joseph sang "I thought so little they rewarded me by making me the ruler of the Queen's Navee," a large portrait of George W. Bush came down from the ceiling. ;-) )

Welcome back, Lea!

Hey, Lea, what did you do in The Sorcerer for "Their hearts will melt at midnight's hour/ in half an hour/ midnight sour/ midnight tower" or whichever? (You do know what I'm talking about, right?)

(Oh, and wouldn't a midnight tower need midnight tower warders, under orders?)

Certainly it would, and they'd need to be gallant pikemen, valiant sworders... ;-)

And yeah, I know what you're talking about, though I don't remember what the line was. I think it might have been "midnight hour," though.

Oh, and when I go home for break this weekend I'm planning to see the UMGASS production of The Grand Duke, one of the only G&S shows I know virtually nothing about. Given that it's an UMGASS production, though, it ought to be terrific. (And the cast is particularly stellar -- my friend Liz, one of the most talented people I know, is playing one of the leads [she's Lisa].)

*sigh I miss UMGASS...

Certainly it would, and they'd need to be gallant pikemen, valiant sworders... ;-) - Lea Frost

And brave of bearing, and (this could go on for a while, but it won't)

So, you seen the UMGASS Iolanthe?

Which reminds me, Jenny and I (with our parents) recently (ie about two months ago) saw a performance of Pirates in while a lot was taken from the orginal American performance, done by the Carl Rosa company. (they were the ones who did Iolanthe last year)

Hey, have you seen Charles Schlotter's afek Thespis Discography? I'm writing a few more entries for it myself...

afek = fake.

The UMGASS Iolanthe isn't until this April! Though I did see their production of Grand Duke about a month ago, when I was home for Christmas break. It was a wonderful production, although the show itself isn't one of G&S's best.

And I have wonderful news: I'm going to be in the chorus of Mikado! The director called me a couple of hours ago, and I've been gleefully bouncing around my apartment ever since...

Congratulations! Everyone starts out as a chorister... `cept George Grossmith. I hope this leads to you performing principal roles.

(BTW, you did see that there are two UMGASS recordings mentioned at the G&S Discography, right?)

Thanks...I hope so, too! We shall see.

And I didn't know the UMGASS recordings were there (I know they'd done some back in the '70s and '80s, but didn't know how widely available they were), but I went and looked for them, and there they were! The '86 Pirates and the '73 Grand Duke (which got great reviews, proving that UMGASS' talent for turning little-regarded shows to gold is a tradition that's been going on for a while). In fact, I know a few of the cast members of both productions (for instance, the late Bev Pooley played the Sergeant in Pirates).

Speaking of UMGASS -- they've just announced the cast of Iolanthe. The woman who's playing the lead is a good friend of mine, and IMHO perfect for the part.

And we start Mikado rehearsals on Tuesday! It's so exciting...I've been listening to the album, and I just can't wait to do the show...

Where's the fake Thespis discography?

Never mind...I've found it.

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted here, hasn't it? Last time I posted, we hadn't even started rehearsals, and now it's tech week! I love tech week, although I do not love the fact that I have many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many a term paper due at about the same time. (Three of them are due the following week, and one is due Thursday, which is preview night. What is it about Mikado and horrible amounts of homework? This kind of thing happened to me last time I did this show, too.)

Anyway, I'm having a wonderful time -- performing G&S is even more fun than watching/listening to it, which is about what I suspected. I've even come to enjoy singing "Braid the Raven Hair," which is probably the weakest number in the show (except perhaps for "Were You Not to Ko-Ko Plighted." "See How the Fates" gets nominated for that position a lot, too, but I like it, actually) -- which is not, let me hasten to add, a comment on our performance of it.

And I really like doing the Act I finale, which involves mass choral schizophrenia and Katisha's Jedi mind trick abilities ("If true her tale...")

And I have a bona fide discussion topic! I was surfing the web and came across this site, which belongs to an English professor who served as dramaturg for a university production of Mikado. Much is made of the problems of performing an operetta set in Japan but written in the 1880s in colonialist Britain -- because some of it is going to come off as, well, non-PC, to say the least (and that's not even mentioning the original racist bits in the list song and in the Mikado's song; it goes without saying that those have to go). If you check out the link on that site to the updated (not heavily updated, btw) libretto, you can see some of the changes this production made -- the list was of course topically updated, and the Mikado's song was revised to avoid not only the use of the N-word (and the accompanying reference to "permanent walnut juice," which I agree leaves in the racist sentiment), but the confusing references to billiards and Parliamentary trains.

(Side note: In our production, the walnut juice and the Parliamentary trains are out, but the billiards are in. At Michigan, the song was left as it was, except for the replacement of the N-word.)

Anyway. The other thing they did was to take out the self-conscious "see, look, we're Japanese" lines -- mostly. "An abject grovel in a characteristic Japanese manner" was changed, and in Yum-Yum's line "You forget that in Japan girls do not reach years of discretion until they are fifty" the words "in Japan" were excised (changing a possibly racist joke to a sexist one, IMHO), although other similar lines were allowed to stay -- the rather flat line about pocket handkerchiefs, for instance.

So my question is -- to what extent do you think contemporary productions of Mikado should change this stuff? It's something of a commonplace, and one I agree with, incidentally, that the satire has nothing to do with the Japanese; it's based on English government and mores, after all, and the setting is really only incidental (and, in 1885, trendy). OTOH, I can certainly see how some of it could be construed as problematic...so how much adaptation do you think is necessary?

(As a side note, I'm surprised there wasn't a bit more controversy when we did the show at Michigan, which is a very race-conscious campus. But then, most students aren't aware of the existence of UMGASS anyway... ;))

The "years of descretion" line never struck me as bigoted. Just seemed to be an explainatory line in the context of the play. The age of descretion usually being lower as I understand.

Perhaps I'm not trying hard enough to find things to be offended about.

I vow to be much more prickly in the future. ;-)

I read somewhere that the 'age of discretion' line was perhaps a joke because in fact Japan has/had a very young age of discretion.

Say... that reminds me... has anyone had the Three Little Maids in sailor costumes?

And I really like doing the Act I finale, which involves mass choral schizophrenia and Katisha's Jedi mind trick abilities ("If true her tale...") - Lea Frost

Heyyy, not as much as the schizophrenia in the Pirates Act One finale! "Oh, do not leave her!" "We wish you'd leave him!"

Or the fairies in Iolanthe ("To say she is his mother is an utter bit of folly..."). I think we discussed that one in part III.

And you're right about the "age of discretion" line, incidentally. It never bothered me (and I have tendencies to be what one would call PC if one wished to be uncharitable). I always thought the "hey, look, we're Japanese!" business just served to point up the fact that all the characters are really British at heart, and it's just the externals that are Japanese.

We'll discuss Utopia, Limited at another time... ;)

Although Utopia, again, satirizes the British far more than it does the non-British characters. But there you have the contrast between optimism and realism: the Utopians adopt British customs and everything is ideal; when matters require that things become less ideal, they move towards making their society more like British society actually is, if that makes any sense.

It's still a bit problematic, because on the one hand, you've got cheery South Sea natives eagerly welcoming British colonizers. But on the other hand, they're able to put together a better society than the British -- "England with improvements," to quote the libretto. But on the other hand -- can I borrow a hand from someone? -- it could still be seen as saying British customs are superior. Whether it does or not is another matter...

(Hey, I said I wasn't going to discuss Utopia. Never mind. And if you're not familiar with Utopia, you can check out this page and all my rambling might make more sense. The plot summary says "I've left out at least half of it" but all the important stuff is in there, and the subplot that isn't mentioned was cut from the UMGASS production I saw, on which I base most of my knowledge of Utopia since recordings of it are hard to come by, anyway.)

Unrelated bits of randomness (after all, this is G&S Ramblings)...

There's some other interesting stuff on that site I linked to -- their libretto has good footnotes (the ones that work, anyway). And the page about their cast reveals a fairly interesting bit of double-casting -- in their production, the actor who played the Mikado doubled as Pish-Tush! I assume he'd just have to change costumes after the madrigal, and Pish's one line after that ("Your Majesty, all is prepared") is reassigned to Peep-Bo, although since her sister/friend/fellow ward/whatever their relationship is is about to be boiled in melted lead, that doesn't seem quite appropriate. (In our production, the line is given to the kid who serves as Pooh-Bah's intern/prop carrier.) In any case, the doubling is kind of a neat idea -- after all, it's Pish who introduces the Mikado's rather harsh flirting statutes -- although you'd need an actor with a fairly big vocal range, as the two roles require substantially different timbres. Neat idea, though, especially if your company has a hard time finding men (and what company doesn't?)

Also, we did our first actual runthrough yesterday. It's starting to come together! We didn't have any major train wrecks, although much of the choral blocking in Act II is...well, rather fuzzy. Guess what's on the agenda for tonight?

And some of the principals have some rather frightening headgear. You should see what Pooh-Bah's got on... ;)

Oh, and Butch will be happy to know that the list is only minimally updated, and not particularly topical at all -- indeed, the only reference in it that would be out of place in 1885 is "that singular anomaly, the cell-phone motorist." (I, however, am a fan of updating, with one caveat: "Don't stint yourself -- do it well!" Ah, well.)

Wow, that was an exceedingly long post, and at least a third of it was about Utopia, Limited. The things we do when we're procrastinating...

The way I see it, the satire in The Mikado is about England, but the plot neccesitates the setting to be in another country (Otherwise we'd have Queen Victoria or Henry VIII or whoever singing The Punishment Fit the Crime and asking for descriptions of execution, etc.) Since Japan was very popular at the time, and lends itself to some very nice looking 'scenery, costumes, etc.', that seemed the natural choice. When you think of it, the Mikado himself seems the most Japanese character of the lot, Japanese and Chinese emperors are known for their cruel and bizarre punishments...

Anyone here seen the DS9 Section 31 novel by Jeffrey Lang and David Weddle? The first acknowledgement is 'to Maro Palmieri, for thinking of me.' Isn't Marco Palmieri one of the brothers from The Gondoliers? Anyone have any idea of what this means?

Lea, a while ago we were discussing Blackadder actors in G&S roles. Well last year we did (read, listened to) Patience. I take back what I said about Sir Joseph. If any part were meant to be played by Rowan Atkinson, it's Bunthorne. That or Mountararat from Iolanthe (I once had a dream where he played the part, oddly enough...)

More later!

Lea, I have no problem with the inclusion of "the cell phone motorist". I'm a delivery driver and have to avoid those distracted doofuses every working day.

Point (no, not Jack!) taken, Padawan, about displacement of satire -- and yeah, Gilbert was also taking advantage of the fact that the Japanese aesthetic was trendy.

Isn't Marco Palmieri one of the brothers from the Gondoliers? Anyone have any idea of what this means?

I do! The Marco Palmieri in question is an editor at Pocket Books. I've talked to him online, in fact -- he seems like a nice guy. (And apparently that's his real name. I brought it up one time and he said "Don't remind me..." ;))

Incidentally, my G&S company is staging Gondoliers next year. Alas, I won't be here for it, as I didn't get accepted for doctoral study at U-C, so I'm going to St. Louis University instead.

Also, after a bit of thought, I've arrived at the conclusion that the perfect G&S role for Rowan Atkinson is none other than King Gama! ;)

Other things -- "The cell-phone motorist" got changed in performance, actually. I never could make out what he said at that point, though.

But on the whole libretto alteration was minimal -- a few bits in the list song. (Forget what I said earlier about the Parliamentary trains -- the Mikado's song was performed as written, with the traditional "painted with vigour" line change.) And Pooh-Bah acquired several extra titles, including Big Man on Campus, Reform Party candidate for governor, figure skating judge in Salt Lake City (which suits PB's character perfectly) and my personal favorite, Father of Modern Architecture.

The production went spectacularly well, btw. (My parents, not G&S fans, liked it. They also think I look good with black hair, apparently.) The video screening is tomorrow, and I can't wait to see what the thing actually looked like -- I'm especially curious to see if all the parts of the Act I finale where the chorus moves en masse actually looked the way they were supposed to.

I've never seen the Three Little Maids in sailor costumes, but there was a modern-dress production at Harvard a few years ago (I saw the anime-style poster on the website for their G&S society) and I wouldn't be too surprised if they did something like that.

It's a pity that Imladris (home of the other G+S ramblings) has disappeared, but I am back!

We (myself, sister and parents) went to see a performance of The Gondoliers last week. There has been much in the way of flooding and heavy rain recently, so the Duke of Plaza-Toro's line about an unusually wet season causing the streets (in Venice) to be in 'a condition to make equestrian travel impossible' had a new significance!

So, um, what *did* the video screening look like?

Can't remember if this was posted before...

You know that it was Lea Frost who wrote that? So I'd imagine she's "Katisha" on that message board.