More "Yeomen" reviews to peruse

Does Eddie Murphy have any friends who can tell him he's made enough movies where he plays big, fat women? Would someone please tell him that I said cut it out?

I've given you links to all the major "Yeomen" reviews but I now present to you links to a few more of some interest. I have extracted the bits that are interesting to me; click on the link (underlined and pink) for the whole thing, particularly if you like to read synopses.

BACKSTAGE, the actors' weekly newspaper, praises Shana Farr, the Elsie understudy ("Her crystalline soprano and lively stage presence woke up the drowsy proceedings"). Also this:
"Unfortunately, neither the company nor its director, Albert Bergeret, knows where to take the piece. Aside from various mishaps (one actor crashed into the scenery, another kept trying to reattach his ruff), the lighting is dim, the sets flimsy, and the evening without fire.

"As compensation, the score was beautifully sung under Bergeret's conducting. The voices of David Root's Fairfax, Richard Alan Holmes' Sergeant Meryll, and Angela Smith's Dame Carruthers blended well. Rounded acting and singing performances were given by Stephen Quint as the melancholy jester Jack Point, Erika Person as the lovesick Phoebe, and, of course, understudy Farr. The chorus was splendid."

The wonderfully erudite Jonathan Ichikawa has a blog that should be of interest to G&S people who find Zombie Mikado to be too full of farts and ALAN HILL (as if!). This is a very well-considered review. Jonathan's Buxton Diary

Here's another blog posting by a young knitting maven ("Lady Knitterly "!) who goes to a lot of concerts. Check out her whole posting, too. Highlights:
"The orchestra, while playing well, sounded underpowered. I couldn't see the pit from where I was sitting, so I actually couldn't see how big it was. Some of the performers were merely adequate, and couldn't really do the work justice. However, some were just great: Richard Alan Holmes as Sergeant Meryll, Laurelyn Watson Chase as Elsie Maynard, and, most especially Stephen Quint as Jack Point, who was the epitome of the classic G & S character. All three were in exceptionally good voice. (I felt so sad for Jack Point at the end, a true testament to Quint's performance.)

"Incidentally, the choreography of the above performance was really amateurish. Really. At times I felt like I was watching a high school musical. Nearly every second was filled with pointless (and distracting) movements and motions. I'm not a huge proponent of stand and sing operas, but really, let the actors act. It's a wonder I could take any of them seriously with all the skipping and gesturing going on."

The orchestra is 25, by the way. There was too much extremely busy dancing. When Jack and Elsie, street entertainers, enter town they are chased by the entire village, who surround them and turn into the Sharks and the Jets! Every single syllable of text has a unified motion grafted to it, people are doing cartwheels... If the residents of the Tower of London really are this adept at entertaining themselves they should throw Jack and Elsie in the river! Really! Keep all the quatrain-reciting, sarabande-dancing riffraff downstream.

We give one more performance of "Yeomen" Saturday, February 3, at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, NJ. We won't have to leave room for a Mikado set, so every time we're directed to go upstage it shouldn't take 5 minutes to get there. Plus, NO MICROPHONES! And that's always fun. But mics are OK, too. It's all good.

Comments

[Doug]

If you're going to mike a performance, why didn't City Center mike you with body mics? I find those PZMs onstage to be horribly distracting, as people's proximity to the PZM changes, their broadcasted volume goes from nothing to a blast. PZMs should only be used for static staging. Otherwise, you need a wig/body mike.

[MRSTEVE]

Right. Al won't use body mics because that's what they use on Broadway and Broadway is too loud. It's like he thinks you can only turn them up to 11.