by Kevin McLaughlin
Ohio Light Opera opened its tenth production of The Yeomen of the Guard, on Thursday afternoon, July 16, at The College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre. Director Steven Daigle’s staging kept the action buoyant and funny without pretending that every character emerges happily from the plot.
Arthur Sullivan sets it all to one of his richest scores: grand, intimate, and often joyous. Renée Surprenant Fitzgerald’s setting placed the action at the imposing doorstep of the Tower of London, while Charlene Gross’s costumes, in yellows, reds, and pinks, were bright and reassuringly ridiculous — not just British, but Gilbert & Sullivanian.
The story begins with danger wrapped in absurdity: Colonel Fairfax awaits execution in the Tower of London, yet his immediate concern is to marry before he dies. Sergeant Meryll (Mark Hosseini) devises a plan to free him. His son Leonard (Spencer Reese), newly appointed to the Yeomen, remains hidden while Fairfax assumes his identity.
The acting and singing were generally excellent. Thomas Valenti warmed up to Fairfax, singing with some strain at first but with assurance by the end. As an actor, he combined a leading man’s sincerity and charm with just enough vanity to make him faintly foolish.
Mark Hosseini gave Sergeant Meryll quiet authority, while Madeleine Christopher brought delightful petulance to Phoebe as she secured the prison keys. Spencer Reese was affable as Leonard in a role that keeps him largely out of sight.
Phoebe’s opening number, “When maiden loves,” sung at a Flying Dutchman-like spinning wheel, establishes a more reflective world than one finds in The Pirates of Penzance or H.M.S. Pinafore. Christopher sang it in a lovely, unforced soprano, then pivoted on a dime to comedy in exchanges with Wilfred Shadbolt, the jailer. As Shadbolt, Niko Theriault matched her wit with exquisite timing and hapless lechery.
Jordan Knapick’s Elsie Maynard was the vocal standout, bringing radiance and warmth to the strolling singer who happens along at just the right moment — a delicious circumstance — and agrees to marry the condemned Fairfax without seeing his face. Her scenes with Ted Christopher’s Jack Point were among the production’s comic and musical high points.
Returning to OLO after seven years, Christopher captured Point’s skill as an entertainer and his self-important puffery. Christopher, like Point, knew how to hold an audience while keeping the vulnerable man behind the jester in view. His slightly undersized costume added to the character’s physical awkwardness, made more apparent by the bravado of his speaking and singing. In “I Have a Song to Sing, O,” he and Knapick brought a touch of 1920s vaudeville to Tudor England. Their matched phrasing and gestures gave the song a ballad-like tenderness that softened Point without making him sentimental.
Nathaniel Richard played Sir Richard Cholmondeley with authority, while Ris Bland’s Dame Carruthers, the tradition-bound matron of the Tower, had us shaking in our boots.
Wilson Southerland led the Ohio Light Opera Orchestra with a steady hand.This year’s ensemble may be OLO’s finest in recent memory. The chorus sang with clear diction and tight ensemble, aided by Spencer Reese’s choreography, which animated the ceremonial scenes.
The opera’s final minutes determine whether Yeomen feels merely unusual or genuinely tragic. The ending restores order, but not happiness: one character is left alone, and others are paired with little promise of contentment. This production stayed mostly buoyant and comic, without tying everything up too neatly.
Photos by Matt Dilyard
Published on ClevelandClassical.com July 21, 2026
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