IOLANTHE, OR THE PEER AND THE PERI

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!  IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO KNOW THE ENDING AHEAD OF TIME, DON'T PROCEED ANY FURTHER!

Friday night was the first performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's satire of the House of Peers and British law Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri.  The cast was small as Iolanthe is not particularly well known among people of my generation.  

I will try to keep this as brief as possible: Years ago, the fairy Iolanthe committed the capital offense of marrying a mortal.  The Fairy Queen was a very close friend of hers, however, so she banished Iolanthe instead on the grounds that Iolanthe never speak to her husband again.  The fairies persuade the Queen to pardon Iolanthe and let her return, which she does.  Iolanthe comes back and reveals that she has a half-fairy, half-mortal hybrid son named Strephon.  He is in love with Phyllis, a ward in the House of Chancery.  She is unaware of his mixed origin.  And to make matters worse, Iolanthe, like all the other fairies, looks like a girl of seventeen.  And to make matters even more worse, Phyllis is also courted by the entire House of Peers.  The Lord Chancellor himself wants Phyllis for his own, so he refuses to let Strephon marry the girl.  Phyllis calls off the engagement when she sees Strephon with his immortally young mother.  But Strephon calls on the fairies to help him and they send him into Parliament and cast a spell making the Peers pass any bills that Strephon may introduce.  

Act 2 opens with guardsman Private Willis singing about politics.  The fairies have fallen in love with the Peers (much to the Queen's chagrin), but it is too late to stop Strephon.  Phyllis finds herself unable to choose which Peer she wants to marry, Lord Tolloller Lord Mountararat.  The two lords find it unbearable as according to family tradition, they must duel to the death if one of them is to marry.  Both renounce Phyllis in the name of friendship.  Meanwhile, the Lord Chancellor has had a sleepless night and finally resolves to marry Phyllis himself.  Finally, Strephon reveals his mixed origin to Phyllis and the two resolve to get married.  Iolanthe welcomes Phyllis as her daughter-in-law, and then reveals that the Lord Chancellor is her husband.  She goes to him and reveals herself to him after twenty-five years, and willingly accepts the death penalty.  But then all the other fairies have married the peers and so all must be put to death.  The Lord Chancellor offers to rewrite the law so that every fairy that does not marry a mortal must die.  The Queen agrees and marries Private Willis (whom she herself has been attracted to).  The mortals all turn into fairies and everyone lives happily ever after.  

The women's chorus looked very young, but then again part of the plot revolves around the fairies looking no older than seventeen. 
 The best gag in the whole performance was this oversize book of the British law which only the Lord Chancellor (played by a small slender baritone), could carry.  Anyone else collapsed under the weight, even a really tall Peer.  In the scene where the Lord Chancellor sings about when her first went to the bar (which means when he first started his legal career), he thrusts the book in Strephon's lap.  When he closed the book it threw up a cloud of dust that made Strephon sneeze (does anyone remember that old chestnut?).  

 I will that that the Queen especially was a little quiet for the role, but was fun nonetheless.  They could have done a better job with the projection in general though. 

There are still three performances left.  If you can, go to the Music Hall in Madison.