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music by Lionel Monckton & Howard Talbot, lyrics by Arthur Wimperis, book by Mark Ambient, Alexander M. Thompson & Robert Courtneidge, directed by Steven Daigle

Ohio Light Opera, Freedlander Theatre, Wooster, OH

July 18-26, 2024

Chorus: “Truth is so beautiful, if only people would believe it”

When I read that Ohio Light Opera had scheduled The Arcadians by Lionel Monckton and Howard Talbot for this summer, I knew I would have to see it. I had seen the OLO production of this rarity in 1998 and enjoyed it very much, but I thought it would be unwise to wait another 26 years for a possible third staging. The Arcadians is generally acknowledged to be the best operetta of the Edwardian period. For anyone who is a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, the work gives a glimpse both of the duo’s continuing influence and of the mode of music theatre that would replace it. As it happens, the piece itself was a pleasure to revisit even if the production was not of the same high level as it was in 1998.

Ohio Light Opera was founded in 1979 by James Stuart as an all-G&S festival. In 1981 it began adding operettas by other composers and became the only professional operetta festival in North America. Strangely enough, there is a Canadian connection. On one of my visits in the 1900s, Stuart told me that his inspiration for the OLO came from the Stratford Festival. Just as Stratford performed its plays in repertory, so the OLO would perform its operettas. Just as Shakespeare formed the backbone of the programming at Stratford, so would Gilbert and Sullivan form the backbone of the OLO. In the last two weeks of the festival, it is possible to see all six of the works on offer.

In 2000 under Stuart’s successor as Artistic Director, OLO introduced its first musical to the mix. This practice has since grown and a typical summer schedule now consists of three musicals and three operettas, with only one by G&S each season. Seeing unfamiliar operettas at OLO has thus become more difficult and the reviving of rarities less frequent. Hence, there was a strong now-or-never imperative in having such an unlooked-for second chance to see The Arcadians.

The Arcadians was not always a rarity. It ran for two years in London’s West End and then toured for more than 30 years. It also had successful productions in Melbourne (afterwards touring Australia), Bombay and Vienna. Rather amazingly for a British show, it also had a successful run in Paris in 1913. Two notable revivals – a British revival in Exeter in 1984 and the OLO revival – demonstrated that the show is still a highly enjoyable entertainment.

The title of this "fantastical musical play”, as the subtitle calls it, refers to the fictional paradise known from ancient Greece onwards as Arcadia. The inhabitants, later typed as shepherds and shepherdesses, do not age, live in harmony with nature, have no possessions and live in a state of pure love with each other like Adam and Eve before the Fall. They live in the state of the Golden Age, while the rest of mankind has descended through greed and pride into the Iron Age of the present. The idea of Arcadia as a critique of the modern age was written about by Theocritus (d. post 260BC) and promoted especially in the Eclogues of Virgil (70-19BC). It received its most extensive description in English literature in The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1593), a novel by Sir Philip Sydney , and continued to be a theme throughout 18th century European literature.

Arcadia is a place that time has forgotten, and in The Arcadians Monkton and his collaborators show this literally by having Time appear as a character and explain that he has yet again forgotten about Arcadia while the rest of the world has moved on. The Arcadians blissful existence is momentarily shattered when James Smith, a caterer and aviator from London, crash lands his aeroplane in Arcadia. Audience members may be surprised that Monckton & Co. locate Arcadia at the North Pole, but the idea of an earthly paradise at the North Pole also goes back to the ancients, specifically to the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela (c. AD43). It may be hard to believe, but the idea of a temperate arctic paradise was proposed as late as 1885 in the scholarly book Paradise Found, the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole by William Fairfield Warren, President of Boston University.

In the operetta Monckton & Co. show with great delight that the Arcadians know nothing of ideas that we think of as fundamental to the modern world. The ideas of ownership, possessions, marriage, buying and selling, eating animals and not telling the truth are completely alien to them. The Arcadians quickly see that James Smith’s notions are a danger to their society so they dump him in the Well of Truth. Thence he emerges as an healthy, youthful Arcadian whom they dub “Simplicitas”. Should he ever tell a lie, he will immediately revert to his former aged and corrupt state.

Horrified at the kind of life that the people in Smith’s native land are living, two Arcadian maidens, Sombra and Chrysaea volunteer to return to London with Simplicitas to help convert the Londoners to the virtuous Arcadian ways. Many critics have pointed out that the encounter of pure and a corrupt world in The Arcadians has a notable precedent in Iolanthe (1882) by Gilbert and Sullivan in the meeting of the Fairies and the House of Lords. Whereas Gilbert brings this confrontation to an hilariously positive conclusion, Monckton’s librettists hilariously but more cynically demonstrate that Londoners are immune to reforming their venal ways.

Acts 2 and 3 of the three-act show shift to London and to values totally at odds with those in Arcadia. Act 2 is set at a racetrack with an opening chorus all about the importance of fashion and rank and Act 3 at Smith’s restaurant where he is making a profit from the fad for everything Arcadian. The scene at the Askwood Racetrack with the chorus gazing out over the audience as they urge on their horses is generally thought to have inspired the similar scene at the Ascot racecourse in My Fair Lady (1956).

Starting in Act 2 the focus of the piece shifts from the reforming spirit of Simplicitas and the two Arcadians to the story of two couples. Smith’s wife Maria no longer recognizes him in his youthful form, so Smith has fun re-wooing his own wife. Meanwhile, we meet the humble Jack Meadows and the Irish beauty Eileen Cavanagh. Sir George Paddock wants to marry Eileen, but she prefers poor Jack, who is in debt to Sir George and can’t afford to marry. Luckily, Simplicitas and the two Arcadians help Jack solve his problems, but when the Arcadians realize that Simplicitas has been exploiting them, a form of lie, he is returned to is former self.

The Arcadians sits on the cusp of the old-style British operetta as represented by G&S and the new style of music that would find its home in the music hall. Composers Monckton and Talbot aptly use the different styles to contrast the Arcadians and the Londoners. The music of the Arcadians is heavily influenced by the pastoral music of such G&S operettas as Patience and Iolanthe, whereas the music for the Londoners is clearly in the style of stand-alone music hall numbers. There are some notable exceptions. Act 2 begins with a double chorus which was one of Sullivan’s proudest inventions. This consists of the women’s chorus singing one melody, the male chorus singing another and then the two sung simultaneously, one in clever counterpoint to the other. When Chrysaea is tempted by the attractions of London, she sings “I Like London” in a jaunty, march-like tune. When Sombra sings of longing for Arcadia in “My Heart Flies Homing”, she sings in a fully operatic mode with coloratura passages.

The piece is well cast and well sung. Musically, the finest performance comes from Laura McKenna as Sombra. She has a full, rich soprano, lovely in the slow, lyrical passages, and she sings the surprising high notes and coloratura sections with ease. In terms of acting, McKenna is the best of the Arcadians at portraying pure virtue’s comically uncomprehending attitude toward vice-ridden ideas we take for granted.

Vincent Gover’s James Smith ought to be the central focus of the show. You can tell he has the potential to be a fine comic baritone, but, strangely, he rather underplays the role. It could be that he is trying to distinguish himself from Daniel Neer, who rather overplayed the role in the 1998 OLO production that is the basis for the OLO’s recording on CD. Gover clearly distinguishes the elderly, grumpy Smith from the youthful, enthusiastic Simplicitas, but somehow his comic timing is off is both roles. He does brighten up for his big musical numbers, especially the lively music hall march tune “All Down Piccadilly”.

In other roles Holly Thomas displayed her high, light soprano as Chrysaea and ensures that her main song “I Like London” is a memorable pleasure. As Eileen, Madison Barrett has a full, rounded soprano and an equally well modulated speaking voice. She makes the Irish Eileen much more of a vibrant figure than the fashion-conscious Englishwomen around her. Her main song “The Girl with a Brogue” is a real delight.

Spencer Reese, who is also the choreographer for all six of the OLO shows, lights up the stage as Jack. Reese is a real triple-threat. He may be known for his dancing but he has a light tenor that is very easy on the ear and creates an immediate rapport with the audience as an actor. His two duets with Barrett – “Charming Weather” and “Half Past Two” – are both appealing treasures.

Baritone Connor Burns spends most of the show playing the unlucky jockey, Peter Doody, with an amusing understated humour. It comes as a surprise then when we finally get to hear his fine full voice in his one song “My Motter”. This is an example of a pure music hall piece where a person for whom nothing goes right tells us, “I look on the bright side! … I’ve often said to meself, I’ve said, / ‘Cheer up, Cully, you’ll sone be dead! / A short life and a gay one!’” With its whistling interludes one can’t help but wonder if this song inspired Eric Idle and John Du Prez’s “Always Look On The Brights Side Of Life” in Spamalot.

My primary disappointment with this otherwise charming show was that sometime between my last visit to the OLO in 2005 and now, the OLO has decided to mike both the singers and the 28-member orchestra. Contrary to what many people imagine, miking singers lessens their impact. You see the singer in one place but hear the mediated voice emerge elsewhere. The choral passages which used to be highlights of every operetta performance because of their clarity, now sound congested. Even worse, though, is the orchestra sound. As with the chorus, what was once so clear is now muddy. The amplification has the curious effect of making it sound like there are fewer players in the pit than there are and the sound, at least on the opening matinée was bass-heavy, a problem with sound mixing that the OLO has now invited.

The lovely Freedlander Theatre has only 394 seats. I should think that if singers can’t project their voices unaided to the back of a theatre that size, they should consider another vocation. None of the works in the OLO’s basic mandate of operettas and early musicals were amplified. The OLO prides itself in presenting their works in the original orchestrations. So why ruin the sound with the unnecessary artifice of amplification?

Steven Daigle has directed over 90 OLO productions since he became Artistic Director in 1999. His direction is usually efficient and smooth. This production of The Arcadians, unlike the one in 1998 directed by Quade Winter, seems to move along in a start-and-stop fashion and never acquires the momentum that that should propel us through the work to its inevitable conclusion.

In 1999 when Christopher Newton was still Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival and learned I had seen The Arcadians, he asked to borrow the CD that the OLO had made of its production because he had always hoped to programme it at the Festival. The show’s mixture of whimsey and social criticism would make it a perfect fit companion to Shaw’s plays. Unfortunately, that never came to pass.

So, by all means see the new OLO production of The Arcadians for the sake of its historical importance and its rarity. It’s a frothy work filled with one memorable number after another. I am just sorry that the fad for amplifying music theatre, no matter how small the venue, should be taken up by OLO and leave me with such severely modified rapture.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: The ensemble in the Askworth Racetrack scene; Vincent Gover as James Smith and Laura McKenna as Sombra; Holly Thomas as Chrysaea, Laura McKenna as Sombra, Vincent Gover as James Smith and Colin Ring as Astrophel; Vincent Gover as Simplicitas with Londoners; Madison Barrett as Eileen and Spencer Reese as Jack. © 2024 Matt Dilyard.

For tickets visit: ohiolightopera.org.