G&S Society works its magic on ‘Princess Ida’

Princess Ida has sworn off men. Instead, she seeks to enlarge her mind, to pursue only the highest intellectual goals. To that end, she has established a university for women and has vowed never to marry.

But put her story in the hands of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, and marriage is amusingly, unconfusingly and topsy-turvily inevitable. The operetta “Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant” becomes yet another witty, wily evening of entertainment in the additional hands of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Hancock County, which presented the show this month at The Grand in Ellsworth. If you missed it, never fear. “Princess Ida” will be remounted in July in both Ellsworth and Greenville.

The production, as per usual for this clever troupe of G&S groupies, had both elegance and animation, thanks to expert direction by Kathleen Lake. This was Lake’s first turn at G&S here in Maine, where she has more frequently been seen as an actor. But she proved her varied capabilities on this one.

Princess Ida is an operatic version of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s long narrative poem “The Princess,” which tells the story of a cunning beauty who renounces male companionship for herself and the students within the walls of Castle Adamant. At the end, she is persuaded that her feminist utopia must end, and she consents to marry Prince Hilarion, who has loved her since their betrothal at infancy. But in between, there are wars to fight, walls to scale and Handelian arias to sing. And that says nothing of the cross-dressing.

The strength of this version of “Princess Ida” was its all-out embrace of the high art of amateur performance. You’ll find few players (whose major careers are off-stage) as talented and as passionate as John Cunningham, as Hilarion’s father. Or Roland Dube, one of Hilarion’s friends. Or Virginia Cunningham, a professor of abstract science. Or Lee Patterson, the master of protocol who perched high in a tower and displayed cue cards with instructions such as “Dare not laugh” or “Gotcha!” or “Surrender Ida” (and this in puffy cotton balls a la “The Wizard of Oz”).

There was also Zachary A. Field and Valerie Eaton as the adoring Hilarion and driven Ida, respectively, and Bronwyn W. Kortge and Fatima Peterson as members of the university community. No small contribution was made by any of these nimble-lunged folks. David Blanchette, Irving Hodgkin, and the Three Stooges trio of Kurt Schaller, Anthony Pizzuto and Rich Hewitt offered great waves of fun.

And the chorus, dressed in luscious costumes by Lake and Mary Ellen Martel, were straight out of Fellini. Or very nearly so. The chorus, of course, is the backbone of this company, and this particular one tends often to be the strongest one you’ll find in eastern Maine.

Music director Robert Bahr kept the pace smart with a live orchestra, whose gifts are immensely appreciated — despite the synthesized keyboard.

In nearly three hours of performance, the only tricky element for the audience was the too-too operatic voices of the women singers, whose words got lost in the loveliest of musical fashions. The only consistent exceptions to this were Virginia Cunningham and Petersen, both with talented, accessible and strong voices.