Welcome to One Show to See This Week, a weekly newsletter where I recommend the one play or musical you should see in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the next seven days, because I believe live theater should be part of your routine. My inbox is always open, as are my DMs. Glad you’re here!
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One Show to See This Week
The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and His Maid
The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company
The Conn Theater, Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55403
March 6th – 29th
If you’re in the mood to support some operatic work this week (for whatever reason…), you actually have a few choices in the Twin Cities area. There’s the new John Berryman show Strange Heart playing at Open Eye, which is an operetta (I recommended it last week). But there’s also something for those who’d like to brush up on their opera history.
That’d be The Yeomen of the Guard, an operetta from W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan that first premiered back in 1888, and is currently being staged by the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company. If you open up your encyclopedia of Minnesota theater and look under “I’m So Glad This Exists,” you’ll find this troupe shows up first.
If GSVLOC (yes, they use that acronym) is new to you, there are a few things you should know. First, they’ve actually been at this work of staging elaborate productions of this famed duo’s comic operas, among other fare, since 1979. Second, when I say elaborate, I mean it: just look at this cast and orchestra. And third, if you normally think Gilbert and Sullivan’s notoriously silly antics aren’t for you, The Yeomen of the Guard may just be the perfect show to catch from this company; as director Gary Briggle writes, this is “a serious opera filled with intrigue, betrayal and heartbreak — occasional glints of wit and humor notwithstanding.”
Plus, if you were under the impression that people don’t care about Gilbert and Sullivan, or don’t care about opera in general, you haven’t been paying attention: a reconceived Pirates of Penzance ran on Broadway last year, and the Guthrie recently announced that they’re staging that same show as their big summer musical in 2027.
My advice? Grab a ticket to Yeomen and see why GSVLOC has been around for almost 50 years, and then come back and see their production of Penzance in the fall.
See you here next week!
Alex
Main image: Zapata Palms Pictures via GSVLOC on Facebook
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