H.M.S. Pinafore

Comic Opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W.S. Gilbert

Is there anything on the planet as universally joyful as Gilbert and Sullivan? Whether or not you pay any attention to opera, you have heard Gilbert and Sullivan and have smiled. Whether or not you caught all the words, you knew something humorous was occurring. Just listen to the first two minutes and you will cheer up (even more if you’re already happy). Somehow these two plugged directly into our central wiring and created joy.

We all love urban legends and one old chestnut goes something like this: the great explorer/traveler finds themselves on the doorstep of a native chieftain/drug cartel leader/small ocean island people after a hideous, arduous journey. Treated surprisingly well, the visitor is shocked to find their host(s) possess the complete Shakespeare, recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and a selection of religious texts. The visitor might be surprised, but we are not. After all, what else would you expect?

Their collaboration lasted twenty five years or so, marked by periodic squabbling and ended in a refusal to even speak to one another. Fortunately, Gilbert and Sullivan seem to have patched things up just prior to Sullivan’s death. They were also business partners, tied together with Richard D’Oyly Carte, in management of their own theater. Loose collaborations (think of artistic movements like Impressionism) and more formal ones (think the Beatles) often appear to benefit from the ability of the group to be more powerful as a marketing entity than they would be as individuals. United Artists rose out of a recognition of this need to represent their own business interests as a unified front.

One curiosity

is how this drives friendship and unity as well as creates new areas for friction. The more formal the arrangements then the more strident the break-up. Gilbert’s insistence on casting a favored protege was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Even worse, the formal relationship led to a truly harsh separation. Alternatively, the French Impressionists held their group shows and then slowly moved away or succumbed to various ailments. Letters kept being exchanged, but life moved along. Something happens when you must agree on the art and the business in detail.

So, why the universality? A lot of the humor in the operas is political and you might think that would not translate terribly well to cultural experiences outside of 19th century Britain. Take When I was a Lad and you can see the problem. It’s a pretty wonderful send-up of British issues of the day. The truth is that Gilbert and Sullivan clearly latched onto that universal suspicion of those who lead us. In some weird way, you could almost think they were speaking truth to power.

With Shakespeare, we focus on tragedy and comedy, but we often forget the power of his political commentary. We pass along these great works of art because they are more than entertainments, more than frolics and pastimes. Any art that teaches us to ask a few questions, sets a few brain cells firing, and allows us the joy of discovery will last as long as we can manage to carry a tune.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 225 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

The Adding Machine

Play written by Elmer Rice

I no longer remember when some teacher first exposed me to the works of Elmer Rice. I do recall a photocopied version of The Adding Machine stapled together in over-sized glory. The quality was what you might expect from school office machines. I had never read anything like it.

What is expressionism? Asked this question in 1923, when The Adding Machine was produced, I replied: “It attempts to go beyond mere representation and to arrive at interpretation. The author attempts not so much to depict events faithfully as to convey to the spectator what seems to be their inner significance. To achieve this end, the dramatist often finds it expedient to depart entirely from objective reality and to employ symbols, condensations and a dozen devices which to the conservative must seem arbitrarily fantastic.” –Elmer Rice, The Living Theatre

August Strindberg is credited with bringing Expressionism from the visual art medium to the stage. Rice’s book, which I quote above, does a wonderful job discussing American theatre and how it got to where it was around 1960. The wide-ranging knowledge and understanding of all aspects of his chosen field brings into sharp focus the necessity of any artist to fully study their craft, their business, and their history.

With the accretion of experience and time, I now see the interesting place that Rice holds in the history of American theater. Street Scene, his Pulitzer Prize winning follow-up to The Adding Machine, is another acknowledged classic. (We can talk more about that when we get around to Kurt Weill.) Rice’s most notable contemporary was Eugene O’Neill, who was also breaking theatrical conventions, while pursuing a more self-destructive lifestyle.

The Adding Machine predates

both Our Town and Death of a Salesman, two plays which appear to owe great debts to their predecessor. The structure and approach of Our Town is brilliant and appears fully traceable from Strindberg to Wilder through Rice. Each step feels like an experiment in finding the right mix of concrete and abstract. On the other hand, the commonality between The Adding Machine and Death of a Salesman comes in the subject matter and sympathy for the trials and tribulations of the American worker. Rice includes the bigotry of his times while Miller explores the moral ambiguity that had come to define corporate life. Critics hailed Miller for creating the tragedy of the common man. It is clear that Rice had arrived there a couple decades sooner. He found it to be an existential tragedy more than familial.

Perhaps that is why The Adding Machine hit home at the time I first read it. Our stories that portray existential crises tend to move fairly quickly into spiritual and mystical matters. While comfort can be found in those arenas, they also present easy answers for artists to reference with shared tropes. Rice’s most significant accomplishment may be taking those tropes and showing that they do not provide uplift. They are a shyster’s game.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 226 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.