Customer Reviews

Gilbert & Sullivan - The Yeomen of the Guard / Marks, Grey, Opera World

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Brent-Walker series is currently the only complete (except for "Utopia, Limited" and "The Grand Duke") video set of Gilbert and Sullivan operas available. And, as far as I can tell, this is the only version of "Yeomen of the Guard" available on video in the U. S.

This is the "serious" Gilbert and Sullivan, the closest thing to a grand opera the pair would ever do. If, like me, you have viewed the entire Brent-Walker series, you'll know that this production relies less on cutesy camera tricks and more on characterization and a real sense of the opera's purpose. The costumes and sets are really lovely, and the acting is very good, considering that many of the cast are singers before they are actors. Particular mention must be made of Alfred Marks as a likable Wilfred and Elizabeth Gale as a sympathetic Elsie (which is no mean feat; I consider Elsie the least sympathetic herione in the G & S canon).

Pride of place, however, must go to Joel Grey's Jack Point, a stunning portrayal. I know there are those who disagree with me (I read one review that called him "dull as dishwater") but I find Grey a wonderful Point. He shouldn't be, of course -- he plays the part with an American accent and is a high tenor rather than the baritone the role calls for. However, the accent helps to mark Point as an outsider, and Grey has no problem with the lower end of his range. He really plays the role with a sense of the bitterness underneath the jester's facade, without alienating the affection of the audience. Jack Point is the pivotal part in this piece; depending on how the actor chooses to portray him, "Yeomen" can end up being a light operetta or a dark opera. Here, it is most decidedly the latter. Grey is especially moving in the final scene as well -- if he doesn't break your heart, you really must be a cynic.

My review has been positive thus far, so why only three stars? Alas, the video is marred by the excision of no fewer than six entire numbers, as well as the opening verse of Phoebe's spinning song. Some of the most famous songs are gone -- both of Fairfax's arias as well as the quartets "When a Wooer goes a-wooing" and "Strange adventure." The decision for the elimination of these numbers is inexplicable. Apparently some of them were filmed and shown on the BBC broadcast, but no video version contains them. There is missing dialogue as well, most notably the scene between Elsie and the disguised Fairfax and the scene when Dame Carruthers discovers Sergeant Meryll's secret. Presumably these cuts were made so that the piece would fit into the two-hour time slot alotted to the other videos, but if so, that is a poor reason.

So enjoy this video for what is there: costumes, sets, performances (especially Grey), but make sure you have a good recording handy so you don't have to do without the missing music.

In general this is an excellent production, with high quality music and singing in the best D'Oyly Carte tradition. Elizabeth Gale as Elsie Maynard and Elizabeth Bainbridge as Dame Carruthers are both superb. They capture the parts to perfection, both in singing and acting. Geoffrey Chard as Sergeant Meryll, Peter Savidge as the Lieutenant, and Alfred Marks as Wilfred Shadbolt are also excellent. But I've given this version only 4 stars because there are some definite problems with it. Joel Grey is good, but somehow his rendition of Jack Point just doesn't quite work. The part of Phoebe is a good example of how *not* to do it - fake accent, very poor acting, and excessively operatic singing. The introduction by Douglas Fairbanks reaches an apex of inanity, but it's easy to skip it. More importantly, several songs and some parts of the dialog are cut. I don't know how anyone with a heart, or with any feeling for G&S, could have cut 'Is life a boon?' from the Yeomen of the Guard. The words are even engraved on Gilbert's tombstone. Still, on the whole, I'd say it's definitely worth watching.

I am in general agreement with five of the preceding six Amazon reviewers. This is ultimately a disappointing version of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Yeomen of the Guard." It is all the more disappointing because its weaknesses arise from business decisions rather than artistic ones. These Brent Walker productions were rigidly locked into two-hour blocks of television broadcast time. Some, like "The Pirates of Penzance" and "HMS Pinafore" had to be stretched unconscionably. This one had to be cut with a very dull and bloody ax.

Save for one, the performers are very good. Alfred Marks, as Wilfred Shadbolt, the Tower of London's Head Jailer and Assistant Tormentor, has a particularly commanding presence. (My English wife, however, regards the accent he affects as rather improbable.)

The weak link among the performers is the most famous of the bunch, Joel Grey. Perhaps owing to the ridiculously short rehearsal schedule, Grey is dull where he should be sharp, annoying where he should be engaging and a flat-out failure in portraying the one tragic character in all of Gilbert and Sullivan. Too bad.

The London Symphony Orchestra and the Ambrosian Chorus both sound fine. The conducting by Andrew Faris is quite satisfactory.

Some regard "Yeomen" as the most operatic of the G&S works. It is certainly unique in being first and foremost a romance--and a fairly dark-hued one at that--rather than a comedy. My wife, who appeared in two separate productions of "Yeomen" reserves that title of "most operatic" to G&S's "Princess Ida" and on a fair day when the wind is north by northwest, I agree with her.

TEXT: Large sections of spoken dialogue are omitted but the cuts in the musical texts are a far greater loss. The following songs and ensembles are missing from this performance:

Act I--
"When maiden loves, she sits and sighs," first verse of solo for Phoebe Meryll
"Alas, I waver to and fro!" trio, Phoebe Meryll, Leonard Meryll, Sergeant Meryll
"Is life a boon?" solo, Colonel Fairfax

Act II--
"Free from his fetters grim--" solo, Colonel Fairfax
"Strange adventure, Maiden wedded," quartet, Colonel Fairfax, Sergeant Meryll, Dame Carruthers and Kate
"When a wooer / Goes a-wooing," quartet, Elsie Maynard, Jack Point, Colonel Fairfax, Phoebe Meryll
"Rapture, rapture," duet, Dame Carruthers, Sergeant Meryll

It may be noted that both solos and much else has been jettisoned from the part of the ostensible romantic tenor lead, Colonel Fairfax. All the music for both Kate and Leonard Meryll is gone. (This latter I find particularly galling, since Leonard Meryll was my role with San Francisco's Lamplighters--forty years ago.)

By my rough calculation, about nineteen minutes of music, including some of the best stuff in the show, are lost forever.

LIBRETTO: The booklet that accompanies this set neglects to point out that its text is much less than complete--an understandable enough omission, I suppose. W.S. Gilbert's stage directions have been abandoned wherever they have been ignored by the televison director and in some cases new directions have been inserted--again, understandable.

Not understandable at all, however, is why some ham-handed compositor has played fast and loose with Gilbert's verse structures. Where WSG in his carefully overseen printed editions has "Here's a man of jollity, / Jibe, joke, jollify! / Give us of your quality, / Come, fool, follify!", this libretto has "Here's a man of jollity, jibe, joke, jollify! / Give us of your quality, come, fool, follify!" This sort of slovenliness appears all through the printed text.

PRODUCTION: Overall, the production is quite handsome, even sumptuous. Tower Green is a fairly accurate reproduction of the Tower of London's Green as currently preserved. The interior of Sergeant Meryll's house is clearly based on the house of the Dutch painter Vermeer. The quarters of the Yeomen seems to spring out of any of several 17th Century Dutch genre paintings. With one exception, the costumes are good, although they are not those of Gilbert's specifically intended reign of Henry VIII (say 1540), but rather those of the time of Charles I (say 1630).

The exception is the costume of Jack Point. The man is a professional jester, for heaven's sake; he should not be the drabbest person on stage! W.S. Gilbert was a famous illustrator of his own published works. He clearly showed Jack Point dressed as though ready to pose for a portrait of the Joker in a new deck of cards.

The decision to bring the play forward by three generations is a bit puzzling. A down-at-the-heels jester on the road in the mid-16th Century is plausible. Shakespeare's one-time lead comedian and partner, Will Kempe, toured the length of England in the 1590s, performing comic dances. By the 1630s, though, the success of the established professional theater companies and the outright hostility of the Puritans would long-since have closed out the careers of any would-be wandering players.

Three stars for this "Yeomen of the Guard's" not-inconsiderable merits, but is should have been so MUCH better!

I hope someone someday will release a definitive video of Yeomen. This one is not it, although it is better than nothing and seems to be the only version available. Yeomen should be much better known, both to serious opera lovers and to G&S fans. Hoever, it is almost never performed outside Britain, and not very often there.

There are two main problems with this version- it was cut to fit a TV length and Joel Grey was miscast as the jester Jack Point. There are several numbers missing from the middle of both acts. Act two in particular has a very abrupt and truncated feel. Joel Grey is a fine musical comedy performer, but he is out of his league in this more operatic work. This is particularly noticeable in his duets with Elizabeth Gale as Elsie and Alfred Marks as Wilfred- both of them very strong singers. The casting of comedians or Broadway performers in G&S productions might work for The Mikado or Pirates of Penzance, but not for Yeomen.

Another quibble with the whole Opera World series - for the DVD release, why didn't they do optional English subtitles for the musical numbers? It probably would have been easier and cheaper than including a printed libretto with each disc.

I knew I would have a problem with this performance as early as Phoebe's opening song (When Maiden Loves), in which she was allowed only to sing the second verse. Also omitted was Col. Fairfax's Is Life a Boon, one of Gilbert's wonderful "opposite songs" in which each of two verses expresses opposing images, yet both convey the same overall sentiment (e.g., Lady Jane's Silvered is the Raven Hair and Yum-Yum's The Sun, Whose Rays are all Ablaze). I suppose I could have lived with those cuts, as well as the drastic shortening of Sullivan's best overture as necessary moves to stay within budget. However, by cutting the duet between Dame Carruthers and Sgt. Merryll the producers have unforgivably deleted an essential piece of plot symmetry, whereby Merryll accedes to Dame Carruther's advances in order to hush up his role in freeing Col. Fairfax, just as Phoebe agrees to marry the jailer, Wilfred, to keep her own role quiet. Directors cut all the time, and I might happily have tolerated these cuts were it not for the real spoiler: the dark and bitter tone of anger and self-pity projected by Joel Gray from first entrance to his final faint. Granted, Yeomen is the closest Gilbert ever came to relinquishing formulaic topsy-turveydom and portraying realistic human emotions. However, Gray is, for goodness sake, supposed to be playing a jester. Not a single line of his suggests anything remotely humorous in his character. Even his patter song (A Private Buffoon) comes across as utterly negative. One wonders why Wilfred took up his offer to teach him the trade. Overall, a great disappointment.

I saw another version of this opera a number of years ago in which an English star named Tommy Steele played the jester. I had been enthralled with Joel Grey's superb performance in "Cabaret" and expected that he would outshine Steele. Unfortunately this is not the case and I found his performance considerably lacking in comparison. Steele not only was convincing as a jester but also as a rejected lover.

As to the rest of the cast I remember little about their performances other than to recall that the earlier production seemed superior in more than one way. (But I suspect the earlier Steele-led production was also cut as it fit on a single video tape and probably was no more than 2 hours as well.)

This version did have some nice songs cut out, but I am so happy I didn't miss Joel Grey's performance as Jack Point. He really brought home to me the jester's lot in life. Never commended for bravery as the yeoman and the soldier, he and his fellow players face unruly mobs and stingy unfeeling employers on a daily basis to earn a poor living. I really felt this production revolved around Jack. Joel did an excellent job of playing off all the other actors that surrounded him. I couldn't believe he was 50 years old when he did this. I must have watched it ten times.

I have little to add to what has already been written. For me the the production is destroyed by the cuts. Yeoman of the Guard is one the G&S' finest works and this perofance ruins it. I echo what has already been said - please someone - we need an excellent, and fully respectful Yeoman that approaches the work with integrity and respect.

I love "The yeomen of the Guard". I was really disappointed with this version. I did like the idea of moving the scene from the reign of Henry VIII up to the restoration era, because it made much more sense of the storyline of war, heroism, and the Guard made up of veterans. This would have fit very well in the post English Civil War period, far more than in Henry's time. This detail was not lost on the "new" D'Oyly Carte's production when they were performing.

Most of the casting was good, except for Pheobe, who needed a little more of the naughty-girl in her, and the dreadful miscasting of Joel Grey as Jack Point.

There were jesters during the Restoration, though they were a fading tradition soon to disappear, and so it is safe to assume that our Jack Point was one more unempolyed jester who had tried to form his own little theatrical troupe. Nice touch, and one that worked well. But Joel Grey himself simply wasn't right for Jack Point. He could have been, but he wasn't. He also was rather uninterestingly dressed for a jester or even for a street player. His costume might be worn and patched before Cholmundley hires him, but he would have still looked like a proper jester - who was a priviledged person of sorts, and whose costumes were made by tailors, and in many places it was a punishable offence for ordinary folk to dress as jesters.

Jack Point is admittedly a man who is basically humorless, with an acerbic attitude, and he really has himself to blame for frightening off Elsie with his infamous snarl of "Oh woe is you? Your anguish sink! Oh woe is me, I rather think! Yes, woe is me, I rather think!", but at the same time he is a man of intelligence and wit, and Joel Grey gives off not a shred of any of these qualities, good or bad. He just weeps all the time, then dies. It just doesn't work.

It is a shame that this seems to be the only widely-distributed video recording of Yeomen of the Guard. In my opinion it was Gilbert and Sullivan's best collaboration, but this production fails to capture its spirit. A crucial element Yeomen's greatness is its balance of humor and pathos, but the humor is completely missing here. Joel Grey, especially, in his drab costume, seems to miss the Point (forgive the pun) entirely. Without seeing his brighter side, I felt no sympathy for him at the end. In fact, all of the actors cover up the humor. I also feel that the choreography is extremely dull. In some places, the chorus walks aimlessly around like zombies. The numerous cuts further detract from this performance, especially in the second act. On the positive side, the singing (with the possible exception of Joel Grey) is generally very good. Nevertheless, if you want to see Yeomen as it was meant to be performed, go see a good live production.