Cheap Gilbert & Sullivan - Iolanthe / Forrester, Donkin, Stratford Festival (DVD) (Maureen Forrester) Price
CHEAP-PRICE.NET ’s Cheap Price
$17.99
Here at Cheap-price.net we have Gilbert & Sullivan - Iolanthe / Forrester, Donkin, Stratford Festival at a terrific price. The real-time price may actually be cheaper — click “Buy Now” above to check the live price at Amazon.com.
Stratford's production places the story within a frame--a 19th-century theater company's performance of Iolanthe. The device doesn't serve much purpose, except to imply the director's uncertainty that audiences can swallow this material without mediation. That anxiety shows in the production's overwrought style. The performers try hard, though: The distinguished contralto Maureen Forrester, while not exactly funny as the Queen of the Fairies, is as game as can be, letting herself be flown in on a swing and dressed up as the god Mars. As the Lord Chancellor, Eric Donkin is amusing but restrained, perhaps laboring to keep up with the ferocious lyrics he has to get through.
Productions of Gilbert and Sullivan these days often include rewritten lyrics and dialogue; this one is loaded with them. The extent of the updating will alarm some viewers, but it's wholly in the spirit of the piece, since Gilbert's script is full of topical allusions that he wouldn't have expected to be meaningful more than a century later. Many of his political asides have, of course, been replaced with Canada-specific references, which will be of only limited value to non-Canadians. --David Olivenbaum
| ACTORS: | Maureen Forrester |
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 01 January, 1987 |
| MANUFACTURER: | Acorn Media |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Color |
| TYPE: | Performing Arts - Opera |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 054961347292 |
Related Products
Customer Reviews of Gilbert & Sullivan - Iolanthe / Forrester, Donkin, Stratford Festival
Much Sullivan and less Gilbert While I agree for the most part with the other review, I'll add that the G&S purist will be very disappointed by the arbitrary changes and additions to Sullivan's contribution and very, very disappointed by the pretty much irrelevant local references and such arbitrary re-wordings (e.g. to allow a needless change of "five and twenty" to "twenty five". If you really, really like G&S, give this recording a pass.
Yeah, yeah, but it IS fun!
I just watched this VCR with two children, aged 7 and 10, who don't beg, in general, to stay up and finish an opera (ok, an OPERETTA!). We had a joyous time of it in three tranches. To me that's a solid two thumbs way, way up.
Yes, the sound quality is infuriatingly bad and the "videoization" of a stage work intrusive and distracting. The slip-sync dubbing amounts to a face slap at times. And yes, the voices aren't uniformly wonderful.
But the staging is a delight with clumbsy faeries, caped nobles, pop-up book sets, stage hands continually caught in the frame and inventive swinging entries. It kept us all charmed. And glued.
If the story, and its CBC modernizing, is a tad unaccessible, so what! The music and its delivery are riveting and my girls were there giving the TV a standing O as the credits rolled. Way to do, Stratford!
Stratford demonstrates zero respect for beautiful theater
In 1882, W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan introduced a beautiful opera at the Savoy theater. Iolanthe was at once human and funny, moving and satirical. Unfortunately, this Stratford production seems to have latched onto the phrase "comic opera" and decided that drama and acting are insignificant, and that each scene -- in some cases, each line -- should be considered in a vacuum to maximize comic effect. The result is a series of scenes that betray characters as massively inconsistent and unbelievable, and a show that is much less than the sum of its parts.
I don't generally mind rewrites in cases where the original lyrics would be unintelligible; I think it's perfectly reasonable to write "Captain Shaw" or "Ovidius Naso" out of Iolanthe. But to a modern American audience, many of the dated political jokes are no better understood.
All told, the musical changes, the lyric changes, and especially the (lack of nuanced) acting indicates a complete disrespect for the original product, and makes one wonder why Stratford is (at least nominally) doing G&S at all.