The Ohio Light Opera in 3 Panels, part 2

I have just returned from my annual jaunt to the Ohio Light Opera. Last Friday I posted three-panel summaries of the first three plays I saw there, and today I am inflicting four more of them on you.

Everybody knows My Fair Lady, right? Right?

This is possibly the weirdest and most hysterical operetta I have ever seen - and I've seen a lot of weird operettas. Composed by Victor Herbert, the first act is a pretty disjointed collection of comic scenes and songs. However, the real pay-off is in the second act, when, for no apparent reason, the entire cast puts on a half-hour spoof of Wagnerian grand opera, complete with magic swan, ponderously self-important music, and totally inane lyrics. 

Take it from me: you haven't truly lived until you've seen an entire operatic chorus bellow "TAN TA RA TA TA TA TA BING BING!" at full volume. 

That was one of the best half hours of my life. I am in mourning now, because I will, in all probability, never again see such a masterclass in egregious over-acting again in my lifetime. It was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. 

You might have seen the 1953 film version of this musical, starring Ethel Merman. If you haven't you ought to. It's a lot of fun, and has some classic Irving Berlin tunes in it, such as "The Hostess with the Mostes'" and "You're Just In Love". 

Incidentally, the alternate version of this strip is as follows:

  1. Kenneth sings "It's a lovely day today".

  2. Kenneth sings "It's a lovely day today" again.

  3. Kenneth sings "It's a lovely day today" and the audience members have to have the tune forcibly removed from their ears.

Seriously, the guy will not stop singing that song. 

With music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by P.G. Wodehouse, this prime example of early American musical theatre relies heavily on a non-stop stampede of hijinks, misunderstandings and mistaken identities. You know... like most Shakespearean comedies.

Anyways, if you're in the Midwest I highly encourage you to check out the Ohio Light Opera next summer. Because it's SO MUCH FUN.

The Ohio Light Opera in 3 Panels, part 1

I'm on vacation this week, partying it up in Wooster, OH at the Ohio Light Opera! As I've mentioned before, I am a lifelong fan of light opera in (almost) all its forms, and I'm having a grand time indulging in a solid week of abnormal people singing very loudly about things that normal people wouldn't sing loudly about.

For those of you unfamiliar with light opera, I am summarizing this season's performances in my now-traditional three-panel mode. 

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Emmerich Kalman's Der Kleine König  tends to take itself a bit seriously for my tastes, and is sadly lacking in the glorious Kalman gypsy csardas that we all expect from him, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that the main plot point involves an opera singer attempting to assisinate the King of Portugal with a bomb hidden in a bouquet of roses. I mean... how awesome is that?

I had this entirety of The Pirates of Penzance memorized when I was about four years old, and would run around the house singing "WITH CAT-LIKE TREAD" over and over again. Surprisingly, I was not disowned.  I eventually fulfilled my childhood ambition to be a pirate by sneaking into the underpopulated men's chorus of my college's Gilbert and Sullivan society's production, where I sported the most charming penciled-on piratical beard ever seen on stage.

Seriously, I am in love with this show. It was, I believe, the first thing I ever saw in a theatre, at the tender age of three. I then watched the Covent Garden video of the gala performance with Kiri Te Kenawa over and over and over again. To this day, the only German phrases I know come directly from the libretto of Die Fledermaus.

Tune in again on Monday, when I will inflict four more three-panel operetta summaries on you! But just you wait. They'll be worth it...

A Mid-Burmese-Lesson's Dream

Two years ago I took a summer course in Burmese language at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute in Wisconsin. It was great, but in the intervening two years my fledgling Burmese skills have deteriorated sharply, due to me not keeping up with my studies and having no one else to talk to in Burmese. So I decided to give myself a quick refresher by listening to Burmese By Ear, an audio course covering all the conversational basics. Everything was fine until we got to Unit Ten. 

Now, given how many of my waking hours are spent thinking about Shakespeare, it's not unheard of for me to hear Shakespearean references where there are none. However, this time it wasn't me. This entire section featured Demetrius, Hermia, Helena and Lysander very politely asking each other what their names were. It was surreal.

And then, of course, I got so distracted by this that I had to listen to the lesson over again, because I wasn't paying attention: I was imagining A Midsummer Night's Dream set in Burma and trying to decide if Bottom would remain an ass or if a water buffalo head would be more appropriate. (Final verdict: he would remain an ass, so as not to infringe on the Bago Nat's territory.)

Operetta Bingo

I am intensely fond of all things Shakespearean, but my first theatrical love was operetta, those fluffy, lyrical stage confections that aren't quite operas but haven't evolved into musicals. My parents took me to a local production of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus when I was three years old (I fell asleep in Act 3), followed shortly afterwards by a trip to the Stratford Festival to see their Pirates of Penzance. I was hooked.

Fortunately for me, the Ohio Light Opera is not too long a drive away from my home. Now in its 36th year, OLO's mission is to perform as many random operettas, light operas, comic operas and early musicals as possible. I have been going there for almost my entire life and shall be driving down again this week to get my annual operetta fix. 

To celebrate, I've put together a small bingo sheet covering some of the most common (and beloved) operetta tropes. If you are going to see an operetta anytime soon, print out a copy and take it along. Just please don't shout "BINGO" in the middle of the performance.

The sausage roll song, incidentally, is from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Grand Duke. This will probably not be the last time Gilbert and Sullivan is featured on this blog...

Ira Glass and the History of Shakespearean Criticism

So, as everyone knows, earlier this week NPR radio star Ira Glass ignited a firestorm by daring to voice his opinion about Shakespeare, writing the following tweets:

Unsurprisingly, the pro-Shakespeare crowd has been having a field day with this. As the world's leading (i.e. probably the world's the only) Shakesperean webcomic blogger, I feel obliged to address the matter. So here...

It's like chocolate. Some people don't like chocolate - I think they're crazy, and they don't know what they're missing, but I'm certainly not going to argue with them about it. It's a personal thing. People have been busy disliking Shakespeare for centuries, but Shakespeare is still here. And so is chocolate. I happen to think the world is a better place because both of those things exist, but people are free to disagree with me. 

Basically, my only quarrel with Mr. Glass is the utterly pedestrian terms he uses to attack Shakespeare. "Shakespeare sucks" is such a bland and banal statement when compared to George Bernard Shaw's devastating "it would positively be a relief to me to dig [Shakespeare] up and throw stones at him." If you're going to criticize Shakespeare, do it emphatically and with some flair. 

Blackout

So, I was planning to do a witty piece commenting on the entertaining "Ira Glass thinks Shakespeare sucks" kerfuffle that has been raging across Shakespearean social media accounts, but then the electricity at my house went out. So you have this instead:

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In case you're wondering what other Shakespearean quotes work well during power outages, I can also recommend shrieking "Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!" Just be forewarned - this tends to alarm people. 

The Ladies of Angiers, part 3

After spending Monday and Wednesday with the irrepressible Ladies of Angiers, I am sad to finally be saying farewell to them. They don't care. They're too busy boozing it up. 

Well, when we last left the Ladies, they had just fended off yet another attempt by John and Philip to strongarm them into declaring an allegiance...

OK, so somewhere along the way I totally abandoned the actual plot of King John, but never mind. This it how it should have ended. Everyone's much happier this way. Don't argue. 

Thanks to Brigit Wilson, Carmen Grant, and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings for letting me co-opt their Elizabethan alter-egos for a week!