Gilbert & Sullivan - Patience / Hammond-Stroud, Fryatt, Collins, Opera World [VHS]

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	Video by:	Image Entertainment
	Sales Rank:	344423

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Product Details/Specifications

Recording label: Image Entertainment
EAN: 9781578900046
Binding: VHS Tape
ISBN: 1578900042
Format: Classical, Digital Sound, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC,
Release Date: 1997-01-01
Universal product code (UPC): 619439000439
Number of discs: 1
Audience rating: NR (Not Rated)

Description
In a world gone mad with languid ladies and affected gentlemen, the lovesick maidens of Castle Bunthorne forsake their handsome soldier suitors to pursue poet, aesthete... and fake... Reginald Bunthorne (Gilbert's spoof of Oscar Wilde). But Reginald loves the village milkmaid Patience, who doesn't like poetry or understand love. When she finally discovers what it means, it is Reginald's rival that she decides to marry. While all around agree to wed, Reginald is left wife-less... and happy.

Amazon.com
A favorite of many Gilbert & Sullivan aficionados, Patience is not for every taste. This satire of pretentious poets and their swooning followers, mocking the 1880s cult of aestheticism, touches a nerve in any celebrity-obsessed age. But it's not exactly subtle, with characters drenched in languid attitude, balanced by others who declare, "It seems to me to be nonsense." Nevertheless, there are pleasures: delectable tunes, terrific aesthetic inanities ("they are perceptibly intense and consummately utter!"), and some very absurd moments on which the entire plot pivots.

This production is part of the Opera World series of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, made for TV in the 1980s. Musically, it's of pretty high quality. The overacting is outrageous, but you can't be delicate with this material. There is one crucial drawback: As Bunthorne and Grosvenor, the rival poets on whom the "twenty lovesick maidens" dote, Derek Hammond-Stroud and John Fryatt provide neither youth, magnetism, nor sexual heat. If we aren't susceptible to the poets ourselves, the satire loses its bite.

Some of the performers get good results. As the title character, the milkmaid who doesn't know what love (or affectation) is, Sandra Dugdale has a crackpot innocence and a lovely soprano. Even better is Anne Collins, who takes a savage caricature--Lady Jane, Bunthorne's most frantic adherent--and makes her strangely winning.

The titles in the series feature chatty introductions by Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; unfortunately, they're fatuous rather than helpful. Many of the videos also have subtitled lyrics, a tremendous aid in following Gilbert's intricate words. -- David Olivenbaum

Running time: 117 minutes