Gilbert & Sullivan - Patience / Hammond-Stroud, Fryatt, Collins, Opera World
A favorite of many Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados,Patienceis not for every taste. This satire of pretentious poets and their swooning followers, mocking the 1880s cult of aestheticism, touches a nerve in any celebrity-obsessed age. But it's not exactly subtle, with characters drenched in languid attitude, balanced by others who declare, "It seems to me to be nonsense." Nevertheless, there are pleasures: delectable tunes, terrific aesthetic inanities ("they are perceptibly intense and consummately utter!"), and some very absurd moments on which the entire plot pivots.This production is part of the Opera World series of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, made for TV in the 1980s. Musically, it's of pretty high quality. The overacting is outrageous, but you can't be delicate with this material. There is one crucial drawback: As Bunthorne and Grosvenor, the rival poets on whom the "twenty lovesick maidens" dote, Derek Hammond-Stroud and John Fryatt provide neither youth, magnetism, nor sexual heat. If we aren't susceptible to the poets ourselves, the satire loses its bite.Some of the performers get good results. As the title character, the milkmaid who doesn't know what love (or affectation) is, Sandra Dugdale has a crackpot innocence and a lovely soprano. Even better is Anne Collins, who takes a savage caricature--Lady Jane, Bunthorne's most frantic adherent--and makes her strangely winning.--David Olivenbaum