Princess Ida 1972

For all its great student population. Boston is cold and boring if you don't belong. One must find identity through a group. Some people find themselves indating bars, others in pool halls, dance halls, the Mugar Library; hitching on Commonwealth Ave.; at endless political rallies.

A certain species of odd-ball has been able to find odd-balls of the same feather through Gilbert and Sullivan. Absolutely without social significance, the G & S crowd lives in a sub-world of its own, with its own politics, hierarchies, and interests. Many are still unaware, for example, of the moon landing in 1969. The focal points are the college organizations at Boston University and Harvard, between which float a mass of amateur actors and musicians, would-be Joan Sutherlands, ex-elementary school stars, sex maniacs, and people with nothing better to do.

While the common undertaking of a show provides the main force of social integration, informal sing-throughs, parties, and slandering sessions go on throughout the year. The Perle Mesta of this clique is Jeff Davies, restauranteur and perennial patter-baritone,whose appearance as King Gama in the BU production of Princess Ida is his second time in the role.

The parties are most revealing: the Harvard crowd tends to get drunk on champagne, fried chicken, and the memory of better times, while BU prefers non-alcoholic punch, Star Market pop corn, and the sound of their own voices raised heavenward in joyous song. (Pot is a no-no. Bad for the voice).

Power is wielded either by those willing to do the most shit-work, or those who can give an impression to that effect. For the last year the Harvard group has been ruled byone Jack Marshall, a government major who aspires to the presidency or beyond. Known as King Jack to his cronies, Boss Jack to his underlings, and Jack the Rat to others, the register of student organizations has entered under Gilbert and Sullivan Society,"Jack Marshall, King."

Last January Mr. Marshall gave up the power and the glory to finish his senior thesis, appropriateiy enough on the theory and practice of brute force. His successor, Kenneth Kantor. speaks more softly but wields an equally big stick. (Of course, like anything else, power is relative and all in the mind: if you don't give a damn about G & S, as you probably don't--but, then. why are you reading this?--these guys are not power brokers at all: they are simply absurd.)

Mr. Kantor looks like Zero Mostel, and is playing Zero's role in the Leverett House production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, this spring. Kantor would like to be a rabbi, and it is perhaps this, plus his remarkable girth, that has made him such a fabulous success at catering for cast parties. Last year he ordered over 30 buckets from Chicken Delight, and was able to return to his room with 25 of them.

At BU reigns the diminutive but potent tyrant, the Tsarina Mimi Vincent. Half Kantor's height and one-third his weight, Mimi has held hundreds of Boston's biggest prima donnas in terror and awe for the past two years. When the set for Ruddygore was three hours late for a dress rehearsal last semester, she fired four set designers in succession, forced two violinists into hiding (they are still at large), and chewed approximately six feet of deep-pile acrylon carpet.

Her chief cohort is one Peter Zavon, whose purpose and identity is largely a mystery even to insiders. A vaguely Nietzschian character with Druidic overtones, Zavon is still suffering from a fit of acute melancholia induced by a typographical error in the PrincessIda poster.

Rounding out, in all senses of the word, the triumvirate of power and authority, isSheila-Gail Schneider, who is known for perfect pitch, an angelic voice, and a demonic appetite for the simple pleasures of life.

All in all, this grab bag of neurotics are people just like you and me, though you might object to your sister marrying one. (I myself, my editor obliges me to admit, have conducted two shows at BU). Somehow twice a year they turn out lavish stage spectacles that are a delight to the eye and ear. If the zanies in this sub-culture have nothing better to do for five nights a week forty weeks of the year, certainly you have nothing better to do one night. See Princess Ida.

The Daily Free Press--April 3, 1972

Production Crews Overcome
Technical Obstacles
by Jim Beecher

Presenting a major Gilbert and Sullivan opera in the space of ten short weeks is no small task. This semester's production of Princess Ida, one of the largest G & S shows, is no exception. With three sets and numerous costume changes, PrincesIda is technically very demanding. Needless to say, preparing for the show's opening on Friday, April 14 has required much frenzied activity from the Savoyards.

Since the SFAA concert hall was destroyed by fire last spring. the Savoyards have had to perform in Hayden Hall. In many respects, Hayden Hall leaves much to be desired. Considering the limitations of a stage that lacks both wings and fly-space, creative set design presents something of a problem. Last semester's settings, for Ruddygore were complex, unwieldly folding affairs that looked great, but were very difficult to change and store between acts.

Princess Ida set designer Roger Lax overcame this problem by creating an abstract, unitized, multi-level platform set that can easily be re-arranged to provided different, yet appropriate, settings for each act. However, as a multi-level set makes blocking difficult, the set crew was forced to work overtime early in the semester to be certain that the platforms would be completed several weeks before opening. Even so, there is still much to do, and it is more than likely that the paint·crew will still be applying some final touches as the orchestra strikes up "God Save The Queen" on opening night.

As overwhelming as the task of designing and building the set might seem, the task of designing and creating the costumes is even more awesome. The Savoyard production of PrincessIda requires the costume crew to make a minimum of seventy-five 14th century period costumes -- from crowns and armor to imperial robes and ball gowns. The magnificent costumes were designed by Susan Gillerman and are being brought to reality by a small crew of dedicated people under the capable direction of costumier Mimi Vincent.

After Mimi has drawn the patterns, each individual costume must be cut, fitted, lined and decorated. One costume may contain anywhere from five to twenty yards of material, and may require from fifteen to thirty hours of work. Audiences often take costumes for granted. However, creating beautiful costumes must be a labor of love, and the end result is, in many·ways, a work of art.

The publicity crew also has its hands full. Individuals on this crew are responsible for creating a sixteen page program, designing and distributing hundreds of posters and thousands of flyers, writing and laying out newsletters and mail-order forms, arranging for newspaper ads and public service announcements, preparing press kits, arranging for publicity photos, and finally, processing the thousands of ticket orders received.

On top of this "pyramid" are the performers themselves. Since the end of January both the cast, under the direction of Jeffrey Weisenfreund, and the orchestra,under the direction of Ken Seitz, have been holding innumerable rehearsal sessions.Perfection is their only goal.

The last phase of the production doesn't begin until the final week, when all facets ofthe production are put together. At this point, the sound and lighting crews must coordinate their activities with the performers. A full week of late night rehearsals culminates in six all-too-brief public perormances. This kind of hard work and dedicationhas earned the BU Savoyards much praise and a reputalion as the best amateur G & S group in the Northeast.

The Daily Free Press--April 3, 1972

BU Savoyard Talent
Amazes Show Observer
by Nancy Evans

In the eyes of an accompanist for the BU Savoyard rehearsals of PrincessIda, the Savoyards "are really amazing."

They can get gestures and postures down to a "T" even while singing the most verbal, packed and complicated gymnastics of songs imaginable," she said. "They genuinely astonish me."

She includes Savoyard Director Jeffrey Weisenfreund as one of the most astonishing persons intimately involved with Ida. "He will doubtless balk at this praise," she warned, "but as they say, 'You asked for it, Jeffrey."

Weisenfreund can enter at will any of the complicated personalities his cast members seek to make their own. When the occasion calls for it, he has the good director's endless supply of facial expressions and gestures. He fires them liberally at his cast members for encouragement.

"The first time 1 saw Princess Ida was four years ago at Harvard. Having seen most other Gilbert and Sullivan, and walking into the theatre with a chip on my shoulder thinking it would be lousy," he said, "I instead practically fell off my seat with excitement.

"I was thrilled. It was like discovering buried new Gilbert and Sullivan. It had been there all the time, but 1 never knew it!"

With Weisenfreund's help, Princess Ida is alive and kicking in rehearsal. It is now coming close to achieving the entrancing and enchanting power which will make it great Gilbert and Sullivan in performance later this month.

Jeffrey Weisenfreund is a long-time Savoyard member. He understands the spirit of the group. He also has the sympathetic attitude of someone who has long-standing passion--pure, simple delight -- in the work of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Gilbert and Sullivan composed operettas, which are akin to musical comedy. But the term denotes light opera, and therein lies the distinction between the two. The operetta must perforce have a romantic plot and dancing. It has sections of spoken dialogue, but musical antics predominate.

"Antics" used here is a kind term, a funny, endearing characterization of operetta. It means energized dancing, highpowered lyrical acrobatics. It means bravura even in scenes with a flavor of melancholia, and no bitter satire or anger anywhere.

The meeting of lyricist Sir William Schuenk Gilbert and music writer Arthur Sullivan proved to be the luckiest stroke in the lives of either. They worked together for twenty years at the end of the 191h century. Out of their collaboration came

In the middle of Gilbert and Sullivan's career as creators, Richard D'Oyly Carte built the Savoy Theatre especially to house their operettas. The Savoy Theatre was the place to which people came for the special G & S brand of humor and fun.

Lyricist Gilbert had a natural ability to cast words in musical shapes. He also had become sufficiently bored by the musical conventions or his time to suggest many ingenious word combinations and musical n flourishes to Sullivan, who then became a party to massive musical burlesque of the 19th centurv commonplace.

Both Gilbert and Sullivan scoffed at convention. They did so for the amusement value more than to change specific conditions. They were looking for the ludicrous in 19th century I life and found it in a variety of places.

Education for women, for example. In the 19th century it was a tedious and predictable box-like container. Girls were educated in a timeworn maze and kept unadulterated until marriage. Somehow.

Gilbert found he could easily make much of this rather locked-in, artificial state, and did so. In good part, Princess Ida runs on separate-educatlon-for-women burlesque.

We are prevented by the gap of almost 100 years from seeing other targets at which Gilbert aimed -- pre-Raphaelite aesthetes, Cornish pirates in Victorian plays -- but for that matter, these specifics matter little.

The truths Gilbert creates through his burlesque exist independent of the details in which they are couched. In other words, it's easy to laugh.

Princess Ida is a fantasy based on a poem called "Princess" by Tennyson. It involves the king's daughter Ida, who refuses to abandon her consciousness raising efforts in favor of marriage. She and a band of women within the tightly shut confines of a castle named Adamant. They philosophize together, mostly on theintrinsically evil nature of men.

Sticking to her intention to forswear alignments with men, Ida excites the passions oftwo armies with female chauvinism. She refuses to meet the prince to whom she has been betrothed since the age of one. Hilarion, the prince, is loathe to press the issue. He really doesn't know whether Ida is worth the trouble to get out of cloister. He doesn't even know what she looks like.

The kings on both sides of the prospective union, however, are determined to resolve their offspring's stalemate decently. At issue is pride of country, and on Ida's part, pride of gender.

Not that Hilarion wouldn't have Ida if he could see her, probably, but sight unseen...? The stakes, "until death do us part," are simply too high.

The princess remains very willing for a long time to cut off her nose to spite her face, but she does come around before the end of Act III. Ida has a fighting soul, however, so her agreement comes hard. Only a singular act by Hilarion fina11y turns the tide.

Gilbert and Sullivan came to Boston University before BU came to the Charles. BU's first G & S operas were presented in Jordan Hall in 1926, when the late Professor Harry B. Center--then chairman of the College of Business Administration's Journalism department--organized eight students into the Gilbert and Sullivan Association of Boston University. He, his son Edward and daughter-in-law Helen, nurtured the group for many years.

By 1935, the Association achieved a reputation as one of the best performing groups in the Northeast. The production that year was the relatively unknown Ruddygore, a work reptated at BU in 1950.

But despite its successes. G & S held little student interest in the Frolicsome Fifties. By mid-decade, the group had dissolved.

BU remained barren until the spring 1966, when the Boston University Savoyards arose to fill the cultural void with Victorian mirth. Originally formed as a social group, the Savoyards quickly shirked the passive pleasures of records and lectures for the call of the stage. One year after its birth, the group produced Patience with the American premiere of the Duke`s Act One solo - on a little stage in the basement of the College of Liberal Arts.

With each successive semester, the group got better and its audience got bigger. The 1967 Savoyards performed Pinafore before audiences of 2O and 30 people; by 1969,the group played Mikado to full houses.

The Savoyards have not restricted their performances to the BU campus. Following the lead of the original Association. which toured its 1952 Mikado to six different Boston locations, the Savoyards last September played Trial by Jury· and Cox and Box in the Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade after having performed Trialduring summer at Boston City Hall. And, since 1968, the group has taken Yeomen of the Guard, Iolanthe, Mikado, and Trial to the Framingham State College.

In spring of 1969, the Savoyards moved to the School of Fine and Applied Arts Concert Hall for The Pirales of Penzance, the first of four highly successful productions on that stage. Ezra Sims of Boston After Dark lauded the show as "an evening of excellent enjoyment." BU's Currents called the 1970 production of Gondoliers"superb," and William Miranda of the Jewish Advocate wrote that the next show was "one of the finest Yeomen of the Guard productions...in a decade of G& S reviewing."

The 1971 performance of Pinafore played to enthusiastic houses, and some unknown arsonist waited until all six performances were completed before melting the Concert Hall- and with it, an expensive chunk of the School of Fine Arts.

So now G & S is back in Hayden Hall, the Savoyards' original home on the Charles River campus. The hall was first used as a theatre on February 29, 194O, when the G &S Association staged Piratesand Trial by Jury.

Last semester, the Savoyards successfully presented Ruddygore, the most technically demanding Gilbert and Sullivan opera. The climax of the show, which required an entire portrait gallery to come to life, brought the house down every night.

Next week the Savoyards will return to Hayden Hall to present Princess Ida. On Thursday, April 13, they will give a special free performance for community people who would not ordinarily have an opportunity to see a live show. The performance, sponsored jointly by the Savoyards and the Massachusetts Department of Community Affairs, comes as a response to the many requests for the show from area charitable and service organizations.

Friday evening, April 14 is opening night, and there will be additional performances on Saturday. April 15, Sunday, April 16 (matinee), Friday, April 21, and Saturday, April 22.

When Sir William Giibert wrote the libretto for Princess Ida in 1883, he did little more than add songs to a three-act play called The Princess he had written in 1870. Both plays deal with women's education, a particularly timely subject in 1870. That was the year of the Women's Education Act and the ooening of Neunham College for Women in Cambridge, England. The most famous English college for women, Girton, had opened the year before.

Gilberts original play was a "respectful version of the poem "The Princess" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The poem was way ahead of its time. Tennyson wrote it in 1847 before the issue of women's higher education had surfaced, and before the married women's Property Act was passed. At that time women learned reading and writing and little else, except perhaps for "graces" such as music and deportment in finishing school.

Tennyson's poem is a serious study of women's education -- at a picnic given by a Sir Walter Vivian, the guests read an old book of legends. One legend tells of a woman who went into battle -- the guests wonder "lives there such a woman now?" One of the girls answers, "there are thousands now such women. but convention beats them down." So as an argumentative game, the men tell stories in verse, and the women sing replies between sections of the narrative.

The narrator is a prince. His mother's family has a curse upon it, "that none of all our blood should know the shadow from the substance, and that one should come to fight with shadows and to fall." This device permits Tennyson poetic digressions, disguised as the prince's hallucinations.

The prince is betrothed to Ida, daughter of King Gama, who rules the land to the south. When the time comes for Ida to join her husband in his kingdom, Gama reveals that she has retired to Castle Adamant with two widows to form a women's college. The prince decides to seek her there. His two best friends, Cyril and Florian, accompany him in case he hallucinates. Florian says that one of Ida's widowed professors is his sister Psyche, who married a rich countryman of Ida's. Thus, the men may have friends and aid at Castle Adamant.

When the three men arrive at the castle, they find "Let No Man Enter On Pain of Death" inscribed on the gate. So they disguise themselves as women and enroll in the college. Inside, they encounter a rivalry between two professors. Blanche, the elder, had been Ida's governess for many years and had instilled her with lofty ideals. Consequently,she feels jealous and supplanted when Psyche becomes the more popular teacher at the college.

The men contact Psyche, who agrees that blood is thicker than water. She will not betray them; besides, she and Cyril have taken a liking to each other. Blanche's daughter Melissa finds out about the men's disguises, but falls in love with Florian and keeps quiet, too. Blanche also discovers the secret, but Cyril buys her off by promising her that the prince will let her run her own school after he has gained Ida.

The prince then meets Ida. He falls in love with her, but one of his seizures comes over him, and he sees her as "a hollow show...a painted fantasy."

The inhabitants of the castle set out on a picnic. While riding to the site, the prince (disguised as a woman) says he knows the prince to whom Ida is engaged. Though he presses his suit, she is not interested.

At the picnic, some girls sing among themselves the famous "tears, idle tears." Cyril drinks too much wine and sings a careless tavern catch, during which the men are discovered.

The women flee, but Ida, blind with rage, stumbles into the river. Cyril and Psyche escape, although the prince and Florian are captured. Blanche and Melissa's part in the plot is discovered. Melissa is forgiven because of her youth. Blanche is dismissed from the school despite an eloquent plea that she dared not tell Ida for fear "To meet a cold 'We thank you, we shall hear of it' from Lady Psyche."

From a messenger comes word that the prince's father will take revenge on Ida's father and brothers for any harm done his son. Ida's students panic. She calms them and urges them to fight for their own safety. She then has the men thrown out of Castle Adamant.

At his father's nearby camp, the prince sets Ida's kinsmen free. He and Florian are reunited with Cyril and Psyche. Psyche fears for the safely of the infant daughter she left behind. The prince and the two kings discuss the possibility of winning Ida by force.The prince fears this move will alienate her forever. Gama realizes that the prince loves Ida, and sends her favorite brother Arac to parley with her.

It is decided`that the prince, Cyril, and Florian will duel with Ida's three brothers. Arac and company win, and the prince is severely wounded. Ida could let him die, butcompassion tempers her. She nurses him back to health, and in the process, falls in love with him.

When the prince has recovered, Ida faces her final decision. She admits she loves him, but "She still were loathe to yield herself to one/that wholly scorned to help theirequal uplift/against the sons of men, and barbarous laws." The prince replies that he has never disagreed with her aims. His long dead mother taught him that "The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink together." At these words. Ida is convinced of his sincerity.

In the epilogue. Walter Vivian's guests agree that "ourselves are full/ of social wrong but agree 'Patience! Give it time."'

The changes Gilbert made in adapting this poem for the stage and later for a musical production are as much a result of his parodying Tennyson's ideas as they are a result ofthe differences between the two mediums.

Tennyson wrote "The Princess" in blank verse, which Gilbert has retained throughout, except in the musical numbers. Tennyson takes a lofty, often bombastic, tone which Gilbert parodies very effectively. For example. Tennyson's Are you that Lady Psyche, I rejoined,/ The fifthe in the line from old Florian,/ Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall,/ As he bestrode my grandsire, when he fell,/ And all else fled. In Gilbert's libretto becomes: Are you that learned Psyche who/ at school alarmed her mates because she called a buttercup "Panunculus Bulbosus?"

Gilbert disregarded all of Tennyson's songs, even though they might have provided Sullivan with a splendid musical opportunity. Gilbert. however. hit pay dirt when he decided to write Cyril's drinking song "Would you know the kind of maid sets my heart aflame. ah?" This number is probably the most delightful and most popular one in the whole opera.

`Psyche's song about the ape who 'Shaved his bristles, docked his tail, " and became "Darwinian Man" was made possible only when Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1882.

Gilbert retained all or Tennyson's character names; however, in most cases he simplified the characters and action. Ida's brothers lose the battle. She somewhat asininely falls in love with Prince Hilarion when it becomes clear that she must marry him. Blanche is less bitter than ridiculous, and her quarrel is with Ida, not Psyche.Tennyson makes Ida's goals seem distorted, while Gilbert portrays them as absurd.

The Boston University Savoyards will repeat their production of Princess Ida at Hayden Hall again this week, and hopefully by the second week they may chop off some of the three-hour running time on opening night. Faster tempo, faster cues, less time taken tuning up before each of the three acts, and faster exits and entrances would surely help in this regard. However, it will take more than zippier pace, plus the careful if weak singing of the cast and the full and well-rehearsed orchestra, to make this operetta interesting to any but the rabid Gilbert and Sullivan fans.

Princess Ida herself is probably the Victorian equivalent of a Women's Liberationist, a girl so out of love with the opposite sex that she runs a cloistered all-girl college that theorizes that men, but not women, were descended from monkeys. In the simplistic world of G&S, this is perhaps the most simple-minded of their operettas, what with a Prince Hilarion and two comic buddies sneaking into this nunnery sketchily disguised as women, and everything turning out all too tritely right for the finale.

There are two valid approaches to G&S operettas. One treats them as music, concentrating on clarity of tone above all else. Musical director Ken Seitz and stage director Jeffrey Weisenfreud have opted this, instead of treating the show as comedy, which would have meant more realistic blocking and line readings, some serious attempts at stage business and characterization, and some real choreography. In amateur productions,both approaches have their pitfalls, and there is the additional danger that the talent may not be available to make either one work properly.

At Hayden Hall, the B.U. Savoyards stand and deliver their lines as flat-footedly faced forward as they deliver their songs. They suggest some truth to Anna Russell's quip that "Sopranos can sound that way because they have resonance where their brains ought to be." Here not only the sopranos but the entire cast has a pose-change-attitude approach to the show which may satisfy the director, but which makes for a dull evening of"comedy."

At one point Bob Plunkett offends the feminists with the drunken rendition of a love song. Earlier, when Plunkett and Robb Romaine first don the robes of women, their companion Albert Sherman gets off on the idea of drag in a way reminiscent of Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. At the beginning and the end, Jeffrey Wayne Davies puts some life into the crusty old curmudgeon King Gama. And throughout, Sheila-Gail Schneider as a love-smitten feminist and later as a veritable Brunhilde of an Amazon, steals all her scenes with her eyes and verve.

And that's about all. Linda N. Milani as Princess Ida has a loud, big voice, and was probably dead on key. (This reviewer is from the theatre department, not the music department.) Susan L. Gillerman's costumes were happily out of The Blue Book of Fairieswhen they weren't out of Prince Valiant. The orchestra hit fewer clinkers than any student musicians anywhere, but since they sounded as though everyone was crawling through molasses, that should be expected.--L.S.

It's too bad that people group Gilbert and Sullivan with straight opera because this misconception discourages many from attending G & S performances. Those who were swept up by last weekend's BU Savoyard production of Princess Ida,however, will never mistake G & S for conventional opera again.

The Savoyards retained audience fascination throughout the entire show. Even though Hayden Hall's acoustics leave much to be desired, good diction and projection allowed the audience to follow Prince Hilarion's pursuit of his betrothed with relative ease. They actively enjoyed the musical preliminaries establishing Ida's plot and leaned forward intheir seats as the plot unfolded.

Ida's cast successfully portrayed unique identities for each character -- Ida as the Victorian style women's libber, Hilarion as the sweet young prince charming, Florian and Cyril as his trusted yet devilish right hand men, Ida's father King Gama as the grumbling nitpicker.

The audience gasped as Linda Milani struck her first notes in Ida`s appeal to the goddess Minerva. Linda, incidentally, has had only one vear of formal voice training, but her softly rich tones enveloped the hall with ringing clarity.

Jeffrey Wayne Davies set the audience a-flutter with his portrayal of grumpy King Gama and made them wish Gama had a larger part in the show. His carefully designed rags and skillful make-up job complemented the crackly affectations in his voice as he glibly alternated between a despondent wretch and a lively "dirty old man."

Gama's three sons, played by Jean-Paul Marcoux, William Walton, and Philip Bass III inbulky armor, provoked many a giggle with their inane appearances as apish, incompetent warriors. If Gilbert and Sullivan had not designed them to be so goofy, they could potentially have come across as the villains in the story. But as they stand, they contrast with the gallant Hilarion, Florian, and Cyril, and add comic relief to an already hilarious production.

Albert Sherman as Florian literally stopped the show Saturday night with his effeminate mannerisms during his, Hilarion's, and Cyril's illegal infiltration of Ida's school for women. The three had to dress as women so that they might gain access to the princess, and Florian spared no mincing or eyelash-batting as he sang "I am a maiden coyly blushing..." Thunderous applause begged and secured repetition of all three verses of the number; Florian obliged them also with additions to his repertoire of exagerratedly dainty behavior.

Princess Ida may not be one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most famous operas, but the Savoyard's presentation of it could certainly make an audience believe it were. The Savoyards will periorm Ida two more times this weekend. Don't hesitate to go; you will encounter no heavy opera and may well be amused by a facet of musical stage production you may never have known existed.