Fans of musical theater with slightly old-fashioned tastes have visited Ohio Light Opera for 45 seasons. Just three hours northeast of Cincinnati, OLO is in its 45th professional season at the College of Wooster. Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas were its initial impetus, but today its repertoire has expanded to traditional Golden Age musicals in a June-July summer season. OLO’s reputation for consistently and faithfully restaging historical operettas and musicals makes it unique. In general, operettas contain spoken dialogue and songs, often spinning comic, satirical and witty stories.
OLO’s current season offers three operettas and three classic musicals: Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers (1889), Lehar’s The Count of Luxembourg (1909), Monckton and Talbot’s The Arcadians (1909), Gay’s Me and My Girl (1937, 1984), Loesser’s Guys & Dolls (1950) and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Sound of Music (1959). In late June, I was there for four productions, all staged in the 394-seat Freedlander Theatre on the college campus, a comfortable 1974 venue with more legroom than most theaters. Each performance delivered authentic productions of these classic titles by energetic performers from its nearly 50-person acting company. Across 45 seasons, OLO has staged 151 titles for more than 750,000 patrons.
The Gondoliers: The 1999 film Topsy-Turvy, a biographical film about Gilbert and Sullivan, portrayed their often-contentious working relationship. Its title is a perfect summary of the stories Gilbert wrote for Sullivan’s melodic scores, with absurd tales pushed to ridiculous conclusions. In The Gondoliers, the comedy spins around a pair of young Venetian gondoliers raised as brothers who learn that one of them is actually the King of Barataria — but which one is which is a mystery. Casilda, a young woman of royal descent, comes forward, engaged to one of these boys as a baby, meaning she’d become the Queen of Barataria. Of course, she’s in love with someone else. Meanwhile, the gondoliers have married two farm girls. They decide to rule Barataria together, doing away with royal protocols, until their identities can be sorted out. However, women will not be admitted to the kingdom until one king is revealed, so the wives are left behind. This leads to a great deal of comic silliness performed with elaborate choreography (Spencer Reese is OLO’s season choreographer) and scenes of very tongue-in-cheek humor, including poking fun at the illogic of royal rules.
OLO double-casts many leading roles for alternating performances, including Marco and Giuseppe as the young gondoliers. Davian Raggio (Marco) and Connor Burns (Giuseppe) earned lots of laughs with their arm-in-arm efforts to rule jointly. As the farm girls Gianetta and Tessa, Laura McKenna and Julia Fedor (also double-cast), have amusing vocal moments as they try to reconnect with their husbands. Holly Thomas plays Casilda (double-cast).
Comic highlights include Vincent Gover as the Duke of Plaza-Toro, Casilda’s dithering father, and Andrea McGaugh, as the imperious Duchess, who barely suffers her husband’s ridiculous behavior. Tall and powerfully voiced Zachary Elmassian is the meddling, conservative Grand Inquisitor.
OLO productions are supported by a 24-piece orchestra, led by Michael Borowitz. For the Gondoliers' sprightly overture, the entire ensemble was elevated from the orchestra pit to highlight their brilliant musical accompaniment.
Gondoliers has two sets designed by Daniel Hobbs: a simple Venetian country square for Act 1 and, for Act II, a pavilion, initially a littered scene caused by the undisciplined management of the Palace of Barataria. Ornate costumes, including several amazing powdered wigs, are by Rachel Aho.
Guys & Dolls: Frank Loesser’s 1950 Broadway Tony Award-winner about gamblers in New York and missionaries has many scenes, staged fluidly by OLO with flown-in scenery (from Hobbs). The production jumps swiftly from a campy nightclub to a crap game in a sewer tunnel, from the drab Save-A-Soul Mission to an ornate Havana nightclub.
Jack Murphy, with lots of natural charisma and a strong voice, plays Sky Masterson, a notorious gambler, who sets out on a bet to win over Sarah Brown, a straitlaced urban missionary, played by Madeline Coffey (double-cast), with a gorgeous vocal range.
The comic spotlight shines particularly on cabaret singer Miss Adelaide (Ori Marcu, double-cast), engaged for 14 years to a shifty but loveable bookie Nathan Detroit (James Mitchell). Marcu’s rendering of “Adelaide’s Lament,” chronicling afflictions to her eyes, ears, nose and throat caused by romantic disappointments, is a highlight.
Reese, whose ensemble numbers for the gamblers, the Hot Box and Cuban club dancers, are spectacular, is also onstage playing Nicely-Nicely Johnson, including the infectious “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat.” Guys & Dolls has a rollicking, hummable score, and the young OLO cast nails just about every number.
Me and My Girl: This show evolved from a 1937 revue to a more full-fledged 1984 musical. It resembles My Fair Lady in its tale about a Cockney guy, unschooled in the ways of the aristocracy, who unexpectedly falls heir to Hareford house and an earldom. He’s not inclined to be civilized, and he already has “his girl,” who’s at first charmed by the opportunity but soon sees how they don’t really fit in.
Bill Snibson (Reese, also the choreographer) has a lot of lower-class ways that appall snooty family members, especially starchy Sir John Tremayne (R. Porter Hiatt) and the persistent Duchess of Dene (Yvonne Trobe) who badgers Billy — including resurrecting a half-dozen ancestors for an amusing chase around the stage. A blonde bombshell, Lady Jacqueline Carston (Madison Barrett, double-cast), pursues Billy, but he’s only interested in his girl, a Cockney commoner named Sally Smith (Kate Bilenko).
Me and My Girl is as much about dancing as it is about singing, and Reese and Bilenko could pass as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in several of their romantic numbers, ballroom dancing and tapping. Reese puts everyone from the royals to the downstairs servants into delirious dance routines, and the exuberant “Lambeth Walk” before intermission has the entire cast surrounding the audience. Jack Murphy (Guys & Dolls’ Sky) does a dazzling comic tap turn in the Act II opener, “The Sun Has Got His Hat On.”
The Sound of Music: Who doesn’t know this classic musical about a singing nun who lovingly turns some ornery children into a show choir and falls in love with their stern father in the process? OLO gives it a gorgeously sung staging accompanied by the big orchestra, a large cast, including seven charming kids (all double-cast) and a Mother Superior (Sara Nealley, double-cast) with operatic pipes for “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” Several performers from other shows are onstage again, including Gover (The Gondoliers) as bottled-up Capt. Von Trapp, Fedor (Gondoliers) as the irrepressible Maria and Marcu (Guys & Dolls) as sweet Liesl, 16 going on 17.
OLO’s talent depth means each production features excellent actors, singers and dancers in its cast. With the bountiful orchestra and professional quality stagecraft, this festival is a fine destination for a weekend of classical musical theater.
The Ohio Light Opera’s 45th season productions are performed in the College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre in Wooster, Ohio. Six productions presented in rotating repertory are onstage through July 28. More info: ohiolightopera.org.
