“The Sorcerer”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - November 2011

“For once let thoughtless Folly rule the day.”

– W.S. Gilbert, The Sorcerer

Forgive me, gentle readers, for it is impossible for me to be objective about the work of William S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1844-1900). I try to see the Savoy operas through the eyes of a virgin, to pretend I do not know every note and every lyric, but it is no use. I am way to close to this particular forest to see the trees. And that’s why I just love the Valley Light Opera and drive all the way over from Williamstown to Amherst (inevitably right after daylight savings time has ended) to see their productions. They have presented all fourteen Gilbert & Sullivan operettas – including the one that has no score. Now that’s MY kind of people!

This year’s offering is The Sorcerer, the duo’s problematic third collaboration. Like all the other wildly successful and oft-produced operettas that came after it, The Sorcerer is tuneful and funny, but the humor is solidly British and Victorian, so it is almost inscrutable to a modern American audience. If a director approaches it as a purist, s/he is doomed flame out and perish like the title character in the final scene.

Now there is no such thing as a bad production of The Sorcerer simply because it is done so seldom that any glimpse is a welcome treat for true Savoyards – I haven’t encountered it since I directed it myself in 1984 – but if I were going to quibble with Chris Rohmann’s fine production I would fault it for being a little too by the book, but then I am NOT a purist. Purists – and there are those who consider any deviation from Gilbert’s original promptbooks to be sacrilege – should be warned that Rohmann has cast a woman, the charming and talented Heather Davies, in the title role, who is now Jane (rather than John) Wellington Wells. (Quick! Get the smelling salts!)

While I realize that the purists out there are still hyperventilating, I am all in favor of dealing radically with this operetta in general, and the title character in particular, to make it both comprehensible and entertaining to us 21st century Yanks. Gilbert’s original joke was to portray the titular Sorcerer as an ordinary middle-class tradesman. Spiritualism and séances, with their attendant over-hyped spooky-ookiness were very much in vogue when The Sorcerer premiered in 1877, and so to depict someone in an occult profession as a regular bloke was novel and hilarious. In these post-Harry Potter days the idea of a shop in the heart of London dealing in magic and spells seems positively derivative. Something has to be changed if you are going to present a profitable production of this show today, and I suspect that the tension between the desire to be faithful to the original and the impossibility of making such a production viable and marketable is what prevents “The Sorcerer” from being produced more often. It was a sorry day for Savoyards when “traditional” came to mean “boring,” and “innovative” to mean “musically inferior.” This production proves conclusively that innovation can bring new life to superior music that otherwise isn’t being heard.

Just about everything about The Sorcerer needs explaining, so let’s start with a brief plot synopsis: As the show opens the lovely British hamlet of Ploverleigh is gathering to celebrate the betrothal of Alexis Poindexter (Steven Williams), who is a pompous upper-class twit and a tenor, to the lovely Aline Sangazure (Rebecca Ufema), a soprano who is not a whole lot brighter than her intended. Their parents, Sir Marmaduke Poindexter (Matthew Roehrig) and Annabella, Lady Sangazure (Kathryn Blaisdell), were madly in love in their youth, but were too polite to speak their feelings and ended up married to others. Even though they are both now widowed, they are still too hidebound by tradition to confess their mutual affection. Constance (Elaine Crane), a middle class 20-something, confesses to her mother, Mrs. Partlett (Mary Ellen Sailer), that she is pining for love of the local Vicar, Dr. Daly (Jonathan Evans), who seems oblivious to both her and her infatuation. She is, of course, much below his station.

After they have signed the register in the presence of the elderly notary, Ebenezer Geezer (Glen Gordon). Alexis, who is only slightly more in love with the idea of being in love than Kim Kardashian, reveals to Aline that he has hired a sorcerer (Davies) from the old London firm of J.W. Wells & Co., to spike the tea at the village fete with a love Philtre (pronounced filter) so that all the unmarried people of the village (the philtre doesn’t work on married people) will know the bliss that he and Aline share.

You can imagine the topsy-turvy Gilbertian mayhem that ensues when the whole village wakes up in Act II (it’s a great Act I curtain as the whole company keels over en masse!) and falls in love with the first person they see. This being a) 2011, b) the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and c) the Pioneer Valley, not everyone falls for a person of the opposite gender*. (Before we run for the smelling salts again, even the purest purist has to admit that Sir Marmaduke does invite his guests to “Eat, drink, and be gay”!) Things get even more complicated when Aline imbibes the philtre to please Alexis and he isn’t the first person she sees…

Laudably, the VLO is an all-volunteer organization, so while they field a full orchestra and many of the soloists are professionally trained singers, this is at its core community theatre so don’t go expecting musical perfection because you won’t get it. What you will get is a handsomely staged and highly entertaining production of a seldom-seen piece. Rohmann and music director and conductor Philip Hart Helzer are using the score and libretto of the 1884 revival of “The Sorcerer” – the standard version in the D’Oyly Carte repertoire – for which Gilbert and Sullivan made substantial changes to the libretto, but they have included Lady Sangazure’s lost Act I solo In Days Gone By, set to a tune from The Grand Duke, which is a fun addition for G&S fanatics like me.

The Sorcerer does have a fairly ponderous beginning, only really springing to life with the entrance of J.W. Wells late in the first act. This is a pity because there are some great songs in that section of the show, and another reason why I wished Rohmann and company had punched up the comedy – particularly for Dr. Daly (there must be SOMETHING funny about the Anglican clergy) and for Sir Marmaduke and Lady Sangazure. I mean, you have a delightful duet in which two stuffy elderly types confess their burning desire for each other – there’s obvious comic gold to be mined.

But as soon as Davies is on the scene things perk up. Her Jane Wellington Wells – a recent graduate of Hogwarts – is a lady liberated enough to wear a split skirt in mixed company (I bet she even rides astride!!) But her broad cockney accent places her firmly in the merchant class. Davies is a fine singer and she proves that a woman can sing a patter song as fast (or faster!) than any man.

Not only does this make the title character interesting again, it places her in a lesbian relationship with Lady Sangauzre, who has lived a life of heterosexual purity until imbibing the Philtre and clapping eyes on Jane.

Rohmann has added several spoken lines to this production, mostly to make sense of the vast and now slightly archaic vocabulary Gilbert employed in search of both humor and the perfect rhyme. But he has failed to have the general populace make any fuss over the fact that the venerable matron of their village is suddenly ardently pursuing a young woman of a considerably lower station than herself. I think it would be funny if the citizens of Ploverleigh were more appalled by the difference in their rank than in the sameness of their gender.

As Aline, Rebecca Ufema was lovely to look at and listen to, and I look forward to seeing her in a role more challenging to her acting abilities. Crane is likewise blessed with looks and pipes, and was especially pleasing in Act II when the potion’s pow’rs cause her to fall hopelessly in love with Gordon, who plays deaf and doddering extrememly well. Blaisdell and Sailer are clearly younger and prettier than their characters, and Sailer usually sings soprano, but at least neither is saddled with one of those insulting Gilbertian contralto roles as he hadn’t invented them yet. (His first, and by far the worst, is Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance.)

I did get a bang out of Roehrig’s Sir Marmaduke, a character I had heretofore considered rather dull, and I am very sorry I missed his turn as the Fairy Queen in 2000. Evans was, a previously noted, a rather droopy Dr. Daly, although he did a fine job on his solos, which remain some of my favorite in this show. Williams, recently promoted from the chorus, is not up to the role of Alexis, and I was disappointed that his early promise of taking the role over the top comically fizzled out.

Elaine Walker’s costumes are a mixed bag. Overall they are very good, and the ladies’ bustles are impressive (talk about rollicking buns!), but her costumes for the chorus of fiends during the incantation scene are a disappointment – too mossy and not scary enough – and what were the Three Weird Sisters from The Scottish Play doing making an appearance in costumes clearly purchased at the Wal-Mart After-Halloween Sale?? I was also disappointed that she didn’t have Aline wearing a wedding cake of a dress (where’s Vera Wang when you need her?).

Spooky can be fun and true to its supernatural theme, The Sorcerer calls for some rudimentary stage wizardry (theatres were still lit with gas in 1877, but the changes in the 1884 revival no doubt took advantage of the recent electrification of the Savoy Theatre.) J.W. Wells is the only character in the G&S canon to be executed on stage. Customarily he is immolated, but here Rohmann allows his Jane a peaceful subsidence into the village well, (rather like the Wicked Witch of the West, only she doesn’t get to shriek “I’m melting!”) which is less gruesome but also less showy. I was looking forward to a good puff of smoke!

Gilbert’s biggest joke here is on the Victorian British class system, which heavily dependent on the ability of the leads to manage varying British accents. How you speak remains as clear a class determinant in Great Britain today as it was in 1877, or 1912 when Shaw had Henry Higgins fill Eliza Doolittle’s mouth with marbles. I am happy that this is the best use of accurate and fairly well sustained British accents that I have heard in ages – kudos to Speech Consultant Tim Monaghan done a bang-up job with the British accents.

The VLO traditionally does a great job with the sets, and Chris Riddle’s work here is no exception. It is brightly colored, ably abetted by Mike Friedman’s lighting design, and there are a variety of entrances on three levels. I am not sure whether choreographer Graham Christian’s work was restricted by the abilities of the cast or the lack of music you can dance to in Sullivan’s score.

As I said at the outset, it is impossible for me to see this show objectively, especially since I was madly, passionately, irrationally in love with it when I selected in 1984 – as if under the influence of one of J.W. Wells’s potions – and then equally passionately sick of it shortly after closing night and rather embarrassed by my former ardor. Happily, it turned out that this was one former love I was happy to cross paths with once again and I had a wonderful time.

I was sad to see that the house was not as good at the matinee I attended as I have remembered VLO matinee audiences to be in year’s past, and I suspect this is because people look at the title and think “Oh, I don’t know that one” and stay at home. Gentle readers, life would be very dull indeed if we only went to see the shows we already knew! Just because The Sorcerer isn’t often performed doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. It once ignited my highest artistic passions. Go and see what it does for you!

The Valley Light Opera production of “The Sorcerer” is performed at 8 pm on November 5, 11, and 12, and at 2 p.m. on November 6 and 13 at Amherst Regional High School, 21 Mattoon Street in Amherst, MA. The show runs two and a half hours with one intermission and is suitable for all ages.

Tickets are available from Amherst Leisure Services by phone 413-259-3065 or fax 413-259-2407 via credit or debit card order to (MasterCard, Visa, or Discover, with no service charge). Or you can purchase the tickets in person at the Bangs Community Center Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Ticket prices are $20 for adults, $17 for seniors (65+) or students (over age 12), and $5 for children (12 and under).

* True Savoyards will be tickled to learn that Ms. Slayy Lunn (Esta Busi), purveyor of rollicking buns, does make an appearance, but she’s not gay in the modern sense of the word, just particularly cheerful.

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