The Ohio Light Opera 2019 Season, part 2

We’re back with the remaining four productions on the Ohio Light Opera 2019 playbill, starting with a classic Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, possibly the first theatrical piece I memorized as a small child. Because… pirates.

Everyone knows Rodgers and Hammerstein, but Hammerstein did a lot of work with Kern before he really figured out how to effectively integrate these things called “plots” into a musical (Show Boat notwithstanding). Here’s one of their earlier efforts:

A season at OLO wouldn’t be complete without some csardas-fueled Emmerich Kalman (a personal favorite of mine).

And finally, for those fans of hopelessly melodramtic, multi-generational tales of foiled romance, we have this incredibly florid offering from Ivor Novello (aka Jeremy Northam in Gosford Park).

I’m looking forward to seeing all of these next month!

The Ohio Light Opera 2018 Season in 3 Panels Each!

It's almost opening week for the Ohio Light Opera! I'm looking forward to going to Wooster later in the summer to get my annual light opera and early musical fix, but for now, here's a rundown of their entire season.... starting with Adler and Ross's classic musical about sleepwear and industrial action!

Next up is a Rodgers and Hart classic that was turned into a classic-but-totally-unrecognizable film adaptation starring Mickey & Judy, featuring free-range theatre kids attempting to PUT ON A SHOW.

Next up, a Cole Porter musical. As with most Cole Porter musicals that are not Anything Goes or Kiss Me Kate, I know lots of the songs in this one, but have never heard of it before. 

No Ohio Light Opera season would be complete without a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.

I'm excited about OLO's first Leonard Bernstein production, especially because it's Candide. It has an AWESOME OVERTURE. 

You can almost always guarantee that an Offenbach operetta is going to be silly, but La Perichole actually seemed comparatively sedate by his standards... until it gets to Act 3.

And finally, a Lehar operetta. These are generally either moderaetly fluffy or somewhat self-importantly bittersweet and romantic. Fortunately, this is firmly in the first category. 

Looking forward to seeing all this good stuff on the stage on the Freedlander Theatre later this summer! 

Stratford Festival 2017 Photo Comics (part 2)

It's "Stay Sane September"! That means I'll be sharing some of my "greatest hits" from social media and Patreon to keep you entertained while I take the month off in order to avoid burnout, take some theatre trips, and get caught up on various tasks and projects that I have been neglecting. 

Today's installment features MORE photo comics cobbled together from the Stratford Festival's official production photos, starting with HMS Pinafore:

Next up, Twelfth Night:

Then it was time for Treasure Island:

Next up was an ultra-modern Tartuffe with an ultra-modern script by Ranjit Bolt. 

Anyways, that's all for now! Tune in Thursday for another "Stay Sane September" installment!

Upcoming Events

September 28: Cincinnati Museum Insights Lecture

WHO: Me! Again!
WHAT: Talk followed by Q&A on the development of Good Tickle Brain and approaches to making Shakespeare accessible to new audiences. 
WHEN: Thursday, September 28, 7:30pm
WHERE: The University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
WHY: Because they have a cool Shakespeare exhibit going on right now! 
HOW: Reserve a FREE ticket at the Cincy Museum website!

The Stratford Festival 2017 Season... in 3 Panels!

Spring is in the air, which means the Stratford Festival's season is getting underway, so it's about time for me to put together a handy guide to the plays that will be appearing on their myriad stages this year. This season the theme is "Questions of Identity".

We start with one of my all-time favorite musicals:

Then we have one of my all-time favorite piratical swashbucklers:

And then this play. I guess it's a classic of some sort, I dunno...

From Shakespearean classic to Gilbert and Sullivan classic:

I've written a theme song for this next play. It goes like this: "Who lives in a hole and acts quite beastly? SPONGETIMON ATHENSPANTS! Embittered and dirty and misanthropic is he. SPONGETIMON ATHENSPANTS!"

Then, for all your gender-bending needs, we have what is probably my favorite Shakespearean comedy:

It may seem like writing a three-panel summary of a play is a fairly straightforward endeavor. Unfortunately, this is only true when the play itself is relatively straightforward, unlike our next offering:

"After many confusions" is code for "too much stupid stuff happened for me to adequately distill in this format."

Then it's time for a play by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Thomas Middleton:

There's a whole complicated subplot that I haven't even bothered to address here. Anyways. Keeping with the "bodies everywhere" theme, we have this classical offering:

Up next are a couple of new plays, so I may not be 100% accurate with these summaries. First is a follow-up to The Last Wife, Kate Hennig's play about the life of Katherine Parr. This one revolves around a young Elizabeth I and her highly-problematic relationship with Thomas Seymour:

The Breathing Hole is another new play by Colleen Murphy. I may not have all the details right, but the important thing to remember here is that it stars a polar bear.

These two new Canadian plays are followed by a pair of French plays, one classic:

...and one a bit more contemporary:

The final play of Stratford's season is The Komagata Maru Incident. It's framed in a very metatheatrical way, which I'm going to totally skip over here and just tell you what is being metatheatrically portrayed. 

(Stick figures don't do "metatheatrical" very well....)

And that's the Stratford Festival's 2017 season! Speaking of which, I will be participating in the Festival's Forum this season as part of a panel entitled "Willy Shakes: Fanboy". Here are the details:

WHO: Me and the Kill Shakespeare guys (Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery)
WHAT: A panel discussion on Shakespeare, comics, graphic novels, and whatever else.
WHEN: Tuesday, September 6, 10:45am
WHERE: The Chalmers Lounge at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, ON
WHY: Because they asked me to and it sounded really cool.
HOW: You can check out the details and buy tickets online!

If you're in the Stratford area, I hope to see you there!

A Modern Major Shakespeare Fan

Are you familiar with the song "I am the very model of a modern major general" from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirate of Penzance?

Are you familiar with mathematician and satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer's parody of that song listing all the elements in the periodic table?

Well... this is kind of like that, only with Shakespeare plays. 

If you send me video of yourself or some friends singing this song, I will totally share it with the world.

The Ohio Light Opera 2016 Season in 3 Panels Each

We take a break from our regularly scheduled romp through Twelfth Night for a musical interlude!

OK, OK, I'm a big Shakespeare person. Shakespeare Shakespeare Shakespeare. But honestly, if you excavate the layers of my theatrical soul, the bedrock and very foundation of it is operetta, and nothing fulfills my operetta yearnings quite so much as a week at the Ohio Light Opera. As of tomorrow, all seven of their shows, ranging from operetta to early American musical, will be open, and I will be traipsing down there with my family next week to SEE ALL THE SHOWS. 

"But what shows are these?" I hear you ask. Well.. let me tell you...

Our first show is one that will be familiar to most Shakespeare fans. With lyrics and music by Cole Porter, Kiss Me Kate is a wonderful blend of Shakespearean send-up and back-stage antics. One of my favorite musicals.

SAMPLE SONG: Brush Up Your Shakespeare.

I've never actually seen Annie Get Your Gun (with lyrics and music by the marvelous Irving Berlin) but I know at least half the songs already and can do a terrible Ethel Merman impression whilst singing them.

SAMPLE SONG: Anything You Can Do.

OK, let's get this out of the way: I am a person of Asian extraction who loves Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Yes, a Victorian comic opera set in Japan is problematic. I see both sides of the issue, but, at the end of the day, I grew up with this music and I love it. Gilbert and Sullivan is in my blood. 

SAMPLE SONG: Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day.

Have a Heart is one of several collaborations between composer Jerome Kern and lyricist (and general literary wit) P.G. Wodehouse. It debuted in 1917, is hardly ever performed nowadays, and, as far as I can tell, has an incredibly stupid plot typical of this era of musicals.

SAMPLE SONG: Couldn't find one on YouTube, which is a pity. There's a song called Napoleon which sounds wonderfully stupid. 

Ah! Now this one I have seen. La Vie Parisienne, with music by Jacques Offenbach, has (wait for it) an incredibly stupid plot. I've seen it before at least twice (once at the Ohio Light Opera and once on film) and the only thing I remember is that some guy sings about being from Brazil and another guy's coat splits down the back when he bows over.

I have a Sadler's Wells English recording and it has a song with the immortal lyrics "Her petticoats go frou frou frou, her little feet go tok tok tok, her petticoats go frou frou frou frou frou frou frou frou frou frou frou." Which tells you all you need to know about Offenbach, really.

SAMPLE SONG: Votre Habit à Craqué Dans le Dos (Your Coat is Splitting Down the Back). 

This here is classic, self-indulgent, melodramatic light opera plot stuff here. I'm looking forward to it mainly because it's by Welsh songwriter and (later) movie star Ivor Novello, whom you may recall was played with great panache by Jeremy Northam in Gosford Park. I mostly know Novello from his famous World War I song Keep the Home Fires Burning.

SAMPLE SONG: I Can Give You The Starlight.

I have to say, one of my favorite operetta composers is hipster's choice Emmerich Kalman. His Countess Maritza remains one of my favorite operettas of all time. You can always count on Kalman to have a spirited gypsy csardas somewhere in his work. I know absolutely nothing about The Little Dutch Girl except it sounds like such a typical operetta plot and I'm assuming there will be gypsies involved somehow.

SAMPLE SONG: I have no idea! 

And that's the Ohio Light Opera's 2016 season! If you're at OLO, keep an eye out for me and come say hello! I'll be there throughout the symposium week, soaking up all the light opera goodness.

The Ohio Light Opera 2015 Season... in 3 Panels!

This blog/comic might be predominately devoted to Shakespeare, but, as a general theatre lover, I would be remiss if I didn't address one of the highlights of my year: my annual family trip to the Ohio Light Opera, whose season kicks off this Saturday. 

As I've mentioned before, operetta was a formative part of my theatrical upbringing. Sadly, operetta and early, pre-Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals have largely faded from American stages. Fortunately, places like OLO make it their mission to keep these otherwise obscure and unjustly ignored plays alive. 

Here is their current season, condensed into three panel plays. And by the way... if you think Shakespeare's comedies have stupid plots, you have never seen a comic operetta. I have been going to OLO for almost 30 years now, and it is always ridiculously, stupidly fun. (Here are my round-ups of last year's productions.)

An early American musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, who is one of my favorites. I read the plot for this and it is SO INCREDIBLY STUPID. This isn't a bad thing. In my experience, the stupider the raw material, the more hysterical the OLO performance of it is. 

Not my favorite Lerner and Loewe musical, although it's popular with many people. It's got some nice songs in it, though, and the preponderance of gratuitously fake Scottish accents is always amusing. 

Music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ogden Nash? I'm intrigued.... This will be my first Kurt Weill musical. Also, the plot? It's ridiculously stupid. CAN'T WAIT.

By composer Franz Lehar. I love me some Lehar (most famous for The Merry Widow). This is classic overwrought operetta fare - a true romance selflessly sacrificed by a young maid who only wants the best for her man, etc. etc. Great music, though. 

Music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin! That's always a good thing. Like many early American musicals, the plot for this is.... wait for it.... totally stupid. This is a recurring theme with comic operetta and early musicals, but, as I said, it's not a bad thing. The stupider the better, I say.

Gilbert and Sullivan! My first theatrical love! I might have large passages of Shakespeare memorized, but I can almost literally sing through any entire G&S operetta (with the exception of the Act I choruses, which always involve lots of people singing different words very loudly all at the same time, and thus are harder to pick up by ear.) Yeomen is the only G&S operetta that ends on a bit of a downer, but the music is gorgeous. 

I love all the G&S operettas, but I'm particularly fond of Ruddigore, possibly because it has freaking picture gallery ghosts who come down from their frames and very politely torture people. It's great. 

Anyways, that's my round-up of the Ohio Light Opera! I will be going there for the last week of their season in August, where I can catch all the shows at once. If you're in the Midwest area and enjoy truly mindless entertainment with truly great music, I highly recommended checking them out. A lot of these shows you literally will never see anywhere else. 

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. 

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...