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Review: Ohio Light Opera — opening performance of Berlin’s Call Me Madam (June 19)

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by J.D. Goddard

Call-Me-Madam-Playbill“Another opening, another show…” And so it was on Thursday afternoon, June 19 when the Ohio Light Opera staged its opening performance Irving Berlin’s Call me Madam in Freedlander Theater on the campus of The College of Wooster. Filled to capacity, the house was teeming with enthusiasm as OLO launched its 36th season with a political topic that, not coincidentally, hit close to home.

Call me Madam (book by Howard Lindsay and Russell Krouse) is a satire that spoofs America’s habit of showering money on foreign countries, and is based on the life of Washington D.C. super-hostess and Democratic Party fundraiser Perle Mesta, who was named Ambassador to Luxembourg in 1949.

In the musical, Mesta becomes Sally Adams, a well-meaning but ill-informed socialite widow who is appointed U.S. Ambassador to the fictional and “penniless” European country of Lichtenburg. While there, she charms the local aristocracy, especially Cosmo Constantine, and her press attaché Kenneth Gibson falls in love with Princess Maria. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings (July 19)

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by Robert Rollin

OLOLast Friday evening the Ohio Light Opera performed Cole Porter’s 1955 Broadway musical, Silk Stockings in Freedlander Theater at The College of Wooster. The show jumps between Paris and Moscow to depict a love story between Stephen Canfield, a sophisticated and somewhat world-weary American theatrical agent, and Comrade Ninotchka Yaschenko, a Soviet apparatchik.

Yaschenko is sent to Paris to bring back famous Russian composer Peter Ilyich Boroff, who has overstayed his official visit. Canfield manages Borof and also the dim-witted American diva Janice Dayton, who is in Paris to make an independent film about Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Canfield’s plan is to use Boroff’s communist party-approved Ode to a Tractor in the movie for $50,000, and to take a large cut for his commission.

Porter and his librettists George S. Kaufman, Leueen McGrath, and Abe Burrows add three bumbling but good-natured Soviet agents, several other minor characters, and a troop of chorus girls to the Paris mix to create a frivolously amusing and complex entertainment. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — George & Ira Gershwin’s Lady, Be Good! (July 14)

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by Timothy Robson

OLOGeorge and Ira Gershwin’s 1924 Broadway show Lady, Be Good!, currently in the repertoire of Ohio Light Opera, resident at the College of Wooster, falls into the category of “They don’t write ‘em like that anymore.” Depending on one’s point of view, the response to that characterization might be either, “What a shame,” or “I’m really grateful.”

I saw the Sunday, July 14, matinee performance. As an example of musical theater of the time, Lady, Be Good! can’t really be faulted; however, we can be grateful for the revolutionary changes to the Broadway musical form by Jerome Kern’s Showboat in 1927 and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma in 1943, which much more closely integrate the show’s book, music and lyrics into a unified whole. That evolution of musical theater reached its apotheosis in the works of Stephen Sondheim, in which individual songs melt into the flow of the story.

Lady, Be Good!, on the other hand, has a flimsy and immensely convoluted storyline that requires considerable suspension of disbelief. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — Gypsy Baron (July 2)

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by J.D. Goddard

OLOOn Tuesday afternoon, July 2, at Friedlander Hall on the campus of The College of Wooster, the Ohio Light Opera presented their opening summer performance of Johann Strauss Jr.’s The Gypsy Baron. The scoring and the nature of the piece led many critics to consider it neither a comic opera nor a lyric opera, and thus an operetta. Whatever you call it, during the composer’s lifetime The Gypsy Baron enjoyed great success, second only to the popularity of Die Fledermaus. This was a time when Vienna was awash in the beloved waltzes of Strauss Jr. and audiences turned out in droves to hear his always engaging melodic waltz themes while dancing the evenings away.

For today’s audiences, however, staging an operetta such as The Gypsy Baron, with its predictable story line, romantic happy ending, concealed identities and syrupy dose of social satire can prove to be a daunting task. Ignaz Schnitzer’s libretto (English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin) utilized the usual stock operetta types: feuding Hungarians and gypsies, a buried treasure and a notable absence of genuine mirth. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera: H.M.S. Pinafore, opening performance (June 27)

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by J.D. Goddard

OLO“Beginning in the 1870s, two Englishmen — playwright William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan — revolutionized the musical theatre, creating a series of witty, melodic operettas that set a new standard for stage professionalism. Sullivan’s music sparkled with fresh melody, and Gilbert’s librettos blended silliness and satire in settings that ranged from pure fantasy to the utterly realistic. Innovative producer Richard D’Oyly Carte publicized these shows as “light operas”, but by any name, they were musicals — some of the finest the world would ever see in any language.” —John Kenrick

On Thursday afternoon, June 27, I traveled to Wooster to be delightfully entertained once again by a musical production of the Ohio Light Opera, the resident professional company of The College of Wooster. This was the opening performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1878 operetta H.M.S. Pinafore (The Lass that Loved a Sailor). This season marks the fifteenth time the OLO has counted Pinafore among its 120 productions over the past 35 years.

[Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — The King and I (June 22)

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by Robert Rollin

OLO-King-and-IThe Ohio Light Opera’s June 22nd performance of The King and I was most enjoyable. The 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical sparkled in this well paced production filled with good singing, excellent blocking and acting, lovely costuming, fine sets, Jerome Robbins’ original choreography, and especially imaginative lighting, made all the more effective through use of backlit shadow puppets.

The King and I is a gem of a musical, though by no means without a few flaws. The presence of a mature widow and mother firmly loyal to her husband’s memory and actively engaged as a caring parent, centers the show, as does the King, a dominating personality who, nonetheless, wants to bring his country closer to the more enlightened Western culture.

This musical is over three hours long, and the lengthy “play within a play” with its succession of dances can sometimes drag a bit. The OLO’s production never flagged and the play on Uncle Tom’s Cabin moved quickly. [Read more…]

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