Critical Moments

Tonight at the Majestic Theatre Samuel Chartock will offer as the fifth production in his Gilbert and Sullivan revival series “Iolanthe,” with practically the same cast that led the procession with a ringing “Mikado.” The company has met the test and you need have no qualms about their ability to get every bit of beauty and song out of this, the most tuneful and brightest of the G & S efforts.

YOUNG CHARTOCK

In writing each week about these Gilbert and Sullivan operettas I have neglected the young man who is responsible for them. Sam Chartock is only 24 and this is his first season as a professional producer. His success (the Majestic has been comfortably filled since opening night) is causing much shaking of older heads on Broadway.

Early this Spring the Shuberts were offered the rights to revive these old favorites but they thought that the time was not ripe. When the executives of the old Winthrop Ames organization were approached they, too, decided that this was not a Gilbert and Sullivan year. It seems that the past few seasons did not bring out the G & S fans in sufficiently paying numbers. These refusals gave Chartock his chance and he took it. His only experience with the stage was received while a student at Boys’ High School in Brooklyn. There he had dabble with amateur theatricals and had once put on a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. But he is a shrewd young man with a flair for production detail surprising for one of his inexperience. The success of his present productions does not satisfy him. He is ambitious to do other things on Broadway. At present he is playing with the idea of starting a series of Victor Herbert’s operettas.

LYRICS MAKE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN

People often ask why Victor Herbert’s work is not revived. The answer may be found in the lyrics and books of his operettas. As far as music goes I believe that Herbert wrote as good if not better tunes than those composed by Sullivan, a day spent at the radio dials should convince you of that, but so dated and meaningless are the lyrics and plots that accompany them that present day audiences would be bored. Gilbert’s lyrics are ageless: His sly digs at the social foibles of his time find a ready response from theatre-goers today. His unequalled ability to rhyme, his strange meter and his pointed jabs at things that cause most of us to sneer, place him in a class by himself.

IOLANTHE WRITTEN UNDER STRESS

In “Iolanthe” Gilbert is particularly ripe. This satire on the snobbery of Englishmen and the pompous House of Lords strikes a telling blow at the institution of the stuffed shirt. No one who has ever seen it, can forget the scene wherein the chorus, gorgeously robed in full lordly regalia, marches down the stage and sings “Bow, Bow, Ye Lower Middle Classes.”

First played on November 25, 1882, it came at a crucial period in Sullivan’s life. A few months previously Sullivan’s mother, to whom he was devoted, had died and he wrote most of his music, the gayest he had ever done, while he was recovering from the blow. At this time D’Oyly Carte built the Savoy Theatre, had formed a permanent Gilbert and Sullivan company and was prepared to risk everything in presenting these operettas to the public.

Together, the team already had six plays behind them, five of which had been successful and everyone wondered whether they could continue to turn out popular operettas. Sullivan on opening night conducted the orchestra. When he walked into the pit he was a penniless man. That very day the bank in which he kept all his funds had failed and he was worth no more than the money he had in his clothes, “Iolanthe” saved the day, although it did not receive the great critical acclaim accorded “Pinafore” or “Patience,” which preceded it. English audiences turned out in droves and the piece ran for more than a year. In fact, in May of 1883 Sullivan was knighted and became one of the peers he had kidded so unmercifully. Incidentally, when the mantle of knighthood fell on his shoulders Sullivan’s troubles really started, for it was then that his friends urged him to give up operettas and write serious music.