Ruddigore

A witch burning at the stake. A cursed baronetcy. An old woman long ago driven mad by scorned affection. A gothic castle. Thunder and lightning. Bewitched paintings whose portraits step out from their frames. A black and red caped villain, sweeping about the stage like the alligators in Fantasia. A jaunty sailor, home from the sea, dancing hornpipes. Two young innocents, absurdly shy and absurdly in love. A background village chorus of singing bumpkins.

Allusions to grand opera: the gypsy scene from Il Trovatore, the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. Gothic romance and Victorian melodrama. A tale of mistaken identity, love thwarted, love regained, happy couplings for all, and all's well that ends well -- all lifted out of Shakespearean comedy.

Yes, it's July again, and time for another Gilbert & Sullivan Society production. This year, it's Ruddigore, a production last presented by the Society in 1995.

In a sense, if you've seen one Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, you've seen them all. But each still has its own special brand of silliness, satire, and satisfying music. Each has its own lyrical tunes, declamatory quasi-recitatives, and an example or two of the trademark -- and highly enjoyable and unforgettable -- G&S patter.

Such patters are often satirical -- satirizing the politics and social mores of the Victorian era, sometimes supplemented by a few updated verses good-naturedly attacking the foibles of our own times and place. Ruddigore has a patter -- presented at a tempo even more breathless than usual -- that's almost post-modern in concept, with its amusing (if unintelligable) self-referential conclusion:

If I had been so lucky as to have a steady brother
Who could talk to me as we are talking now to one another –
Who could give me good advice when he discovered I was erring
(Which is just the very favour which on you I am conferring),
My existance would have made a rather interesting idyll,
And I might have lived and died a very decent indiwiddle.
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn’t generally heard, and if it is it doesn’t matter!

The excellent feature of any work by G&S is that it really doesn't matter -- it has no notable redeeming social value -- and yet you walk out of the theater happy, whistling, chuckling, and with no doubt whatsoever that your evening's been well spent.

Ruddigore continues playing at Seattle's Bagley Wright Theater through July 30.