Here's a Howdy-Do: The Mischievous World of Gilbert and Sullivan

If there’s one thing Milwaukee audiences associate with Skylight Music Theater, it’s Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operas. In the company’s 54-year history, it has racked up 55 productions of G&S shows. In order to insert a bit of G&S into its current season, Skylight has come up with a new, topsy-turvy revue, Here’s a Howdy Do; The Mischievous World of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Created by local playwright Dale Gutzman, the revue takes a deliberately mish-mash approach to presenting G&S. It includes a lot of singing, a bit of dancing, a few words of dialogue and even a poem or two.

The four-person show fits nicely in the small, black-box style Studio Theater. This stage is much smaller than the usual theater used for Skylight’s major musicals (such as the recently closed Sound of Music.)The Howdy Dostage is “decorated” with a sculpture containing photos of both Gilbert and Sullivan, plus many other odds and ends, such as wood chairs, parts of brass instruments, antiques, etc. Visually, it evokes the “mish mash” that this show is supposed to represent.

For longtime G&S fans, Howdy Do will be manna from heaven (where both Gilbert and Sullivan presumably reside). However, for those less-informed viewers, the show is basically inaccessible. Think you are up to speed if you’ve seen a few productions of The Mikado or Pirates of Penzance?Guess again. More likely, you will be lost by the second number.

The revue has non-musical beginning that goes on too long, sort of like an old “Saturday Night Live” TV skit. The “joke” is that the quartet of actors/singers can’t begin until their sheet music arrives. When it finally arrives (via ambulance, but that’s a long story), the characters start with a brisk opening medley of G&S tunes. Unfortunately, the momentum soon slows to a crawl during a song from Ruddigore.If you’ve never heard of this show, you are not alone. According to one of the characters, it was (and is) Gilbert & Sullivan’s least-produced opera. One can see why. Other duds included a poem by Gilbert, and “Medium High Tea,” which involves some nonsensical audience participation.

Thankfully, there are more highs than lows in Gutzman’s line-up. Niffer Clarke, one of the most appealing leading ladies in Milwaukee, gives a sweet rendition of “The Willow Song.” Interestingly, this was a tune Sullivan wrote for a production of Shakespeare’s Othello.

A particularly hilarious addition is a brief skit in which the audience is encouraged to shout out names of songs from G&S shows. The purpose is to give the actors a chance to sing some of these audience favorites. However, the actors feign ignorance of all of the numbers selected by the audience, even the well-known “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.” Eventually, the audience gets the joke.

The act one closer is a comical, five-minute production of the complete Mikado. (Spoiler alert: a couple of hand puppets are needed to represent a couple of main characters. As he plays the piano, music director Paul Helm manages to toss in bars from Flower Drum Song and The King and Iinto this crazy musical mix.

The second act tackles material from Gondoliers, Patience and The Sorcerer,among other, lesser-known G&S comic operas.

The four performers are well-cast. The aforementioned Niffer Clarke and her onstage “rival,” Diane Lane, are teamed with Ray Jivoff and Paul Helm. Amazingly, Helm doesn’t miss a single note as he plays the piano. Even while he’s wearing a ghostly white sheet, a goofy-looking hat or while standing up while half-turned away from the keyboard – Helm’s fingers keep up the tempo.

The show closes with its most accessible number, involving different characters from Pirates of Penzance to illustrate what playwright Dale Gutzman calls the “G&S formula.” Each singer demonstrates a G&S “type.” One example: Diane Lane’s “Poor Wandering One” becomes “Poor Warbling One,” as she cleverly complains about the amount of vibrato demanded of sopranos in a G&S score. Also, Jivoff entertains with his take-off of the G&S “patter man,” who crams as many words as possible into each note. For fervent G&S fans, it doesn’t get any better than this.