Gilbert, Sullivan, Skylight and Afterlife

W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan collaborated on no less than fourteen comic operas in the late 19^th century. When their first collaboration debuted in 1871, Gilbert was in his mid 30’s Sullivan was in his late 20’s. It may have seemed strange to the two of them at the time to find out that they would come to be household names, but only in partnership. The pair’s very lucrative quarter century together ended only a few years before Sullivan’s death. The work they did helped defined an era of musical theatre. This week, the Skylight Opera Theatre presents a tribute to the pair written and directed by Milwaukee theatre fixture Dale Gutzman.

Gutzman’s tribute begins with the pair meeting in heaven. Not a bad idea . . . the pair that spent two and a half decades working together would probably have much to discuss in the afterlife. The pair are played here by John Muriello and Gary Briggle. Both Muriello and Briggle have appeared in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance with the Skylight in the recent past among many other productions. Gutzman, who had some of his earliest work in Milwaukee with the Skylight, has proven considerable talent for directing musical revues with his Off The Wall Theatre Company over the years. His ability to frame a revue will really be put to the test here with a show featuring work from some of Gilbert and Sullivan’s more popular shows. Songs on the program include bits from Mikado, H.M.S. Pinafore and a smattering of lesser-known works like Iolanthe and Trial By Jury.

Gutzman’s story finds Gilbert and Sullivan in the afterlife, following them to Victorian London to a theatre on Jefferson Street in Milwaukee. An Evening With Gilbert And Sullivan closes out a season that has celebrated the Skylgiht’s 50^th anniversary. An Evening With Gilbert And Sullivan is a return to the company’s roots, in 1959, a show by the same name served as the Skylight’s debut production. That production lasted 13 weeks. The current production is not scheduled to run that long, but it will likely serve as a suitably triumphant end to the Skylight’s first half century. The well-known behind-the-scenes turbulence of this past summer well behind it, the Skylight rounds out the season with a program of classic show tunes.

­The Skylight Opera’s An Evening With Gilbert and Sullivan runs May 28^th- June 20^th at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre.­