LOOM ? - America's answer to DOC

[Light Opera of Manhattan this year produced their own season of all the Gilbert ard Sullivan operas in chronological order - claiming it to be the first - evidently they had never heard of the DOC centenary season. Anyway, Jerry March sent a detailed review on The Grand Duke, which was done in John Wolfson's revised version...]
As you might expect, he included many of the ideas described in his book [i.e. Final Curtain]. The part of Julia was shrivelled into raisins, and there were many other cuts as wall, and two extra scenes were added. Completely cut were "How would I play this part", "At the outset"; "Now Julia come", and "If the light of love's lingering", as well as the entire scene between Ernest, Lisa and Julia in the second act. Also cut were one verse each of "As o'er our party roll" and "I once gave an evening party", and portions of the first act finale. About the only thing left of Julia's singing part was "So ends my dream", which was a pity because the Julia was particularly good. The extra scenes (both mentioned in Final Curtain, p 77) were one in the first act, where a messenger comes to inform Rudolph that the Prince and Princess are out of debt and are coming to claim his hand, and one in Act 2 where Rudolph, Ernest and the Notary get together to look for a way out. I especially didn't like the first of these scenes, since I feel that the entrance of the Monte Carlo pair should come as a surprise to the audience - even though Rudolph does tell the Baroness about it, he doesn't expect it to happen, and by the middle of the second act most of the audience have forgotten. In addition to all that, they made considerable changes in the Act 2 finale, and had the Prince marry the Baroness which is in fact a very good idea. I am surprised that Gilbert didn't do it [Surely he hints at it in the original dialogue? Ed.]. One especially effective bit of dialogue here was to have the three women say, in response to a question from the Prince: "He's the gentleman I married yesterday, this morning,"etc. This dialogue should always be included. They did not cut the Roulette Song, which as usual was very effective. Even though I did not approve of most of the changes, I must admit that the performances were most enjoyable. Incidentally, neither the Prince, Princess or Julia used an accent, though Ben Hashbaz did use a Yiddish accent on the only line that was not cut out of his part. By the way, in GG 11 you remark that there is nothing in the libretto to tell that it is traditional for Julia to have a German accent, but surely there are several lines whose humour depends on it: eg. "The haughty Londoner despises me", "I know some good strong, energetic English remarks", etc. These lines are absolutely nothing without the accent (In the LOOM version all such lines were cut). [Agreed, but I still maintain that somebody knowing nothing of G&S picking up, and reading the Grand Duke libretto, would not, on reading these lines, suddenly exclaim "Aha, so this lady must be speaking with a German accent" Ed.]. Having seen other Julias do the accent, I know how funny it can be [Agreed again, but that wasn't the point. Ed.]. I also think it's jarring for a French Prince to sing half a song in French, but the rest in accent free English. [Why not?, if he's singing French with an English accent!!! That wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. Ed.]. Despite Wolfson's dislike of the Greek element (which I share), they did use Greek costumes and references to Troilus. The costumes in general were very good, and quite faithful to Gilbert, except that they unaccountably dressed the Prince's supernumeraries in playing-card costumes (much like those depicted in Alice in Wonderland), which were very striking, and drew favourable audience reaction, but which were totally at odds with the idea Gilbert was trying to convey. JERRY MARCH

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