Yeomen of the Guard

Doubtless, hundreds of talents have ex-

celled before as Gilbert and Sullivan’s tragic jester, Jack Point, but Oussama Zahr ’04 makes it difficult to imagine that the part could have been created for anyone else. With a knack for showing utter despair while flashing a bigger smile than a hopeful at the last punch event, he is the driving center of the most entertaining Gilbert and Sullivan show in recent Harvard memory.

Point is a nasty part—a nasty part in a nasty show. If Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are as English as a cup of tea (and this is a show that makes its audience sing “God Save the Queen” before the overture), then The Yeomen of the Guard is the cup that got laced. It is operetta on crack. The plot starts off with characteristic gleeful entanglement, but when the time comes to tidy everything up for neat resolution, the miraculous ploys fail and tragedy, usually avoided by a hair’s breath, dominates the conclusion.

At the start of the play, Point allows his fiancée, Elsie, to marry Fairfax, a prisoner about to die within the hour, in exchange for money. Simple enough—well, for a Gilbert and Sullivan show.

But right from the get-go, Zahr conveys a depth of emotion not fully suggested by the script. Though his stage direction after the scene is simply to step aside as the chorus moves in, Zahr deftly picks up on all the nuances in the tragi-comic libretto and goes on gesturing and mumbling to himself, trying to justify his action.

Point already senses that something is wrong. As he is a jester, though, and the audience presumably expects a comic end, it is easy enough for Point to fool himself and the audience that all will work out in the end.

But the incomplete nature of that illusion is conveyed by the frantic energy Zahr exerts on stage. Acting out every word he utters, rattling them off at a mile a minute, he goes through life constantly hiding reality from himself (and vice versa) with explosive comedic diversions.

Audience members will recognize elements of themselves in Point, which is what helps make Yeomen so powerful. Though the psychology of his character is troubling, Zahr is a joy to watch—and he is not the only actor on stage with considerable presence. Yet the piece is still unmistakably Gilbert and Sullivan: the operative words remain comedic diversions.

Elsie (Alia Rosenstock), though a disaster as an actress, more than makes up for her dramatic failings with an overpoweringly beautiful operatic voice. She is actually an import from the New England Conservatory, and though it may seem like cheating to use outside talent, many shows feature actors from other schools—and with a voice like hers, even if it were cheating, it would be easy to forgive.

Also delivering a dead-on performance is Samuel H. Perwin ’04, who is particularly well-cast as the cad Fairfax. Perwin, whose character steals Elsie from Point, has a terrific manner of looking over the heads of those who speak to him, convincingly playing up the haughty side of this dashing young man gone wrong.

The two characters forced to stoop (not in terms of participating in the play but in their roles) are also fantastic. As Dame Carruthers, Emily Ludmir ’03 spends her entire time on stage doubled over with age, but nevertheless gleefully singing about her love of the torture chamber to great comic effect. And Zak B. Stone ’03, as the hunchbacked assistant tormentor Wilfred, is captivating as the young maiden’s unwanted suitor. How he keeps the leer on his face, all the while doubled over and singing patter songs, is a mystery, but still a joy to watch.

And speaking of grimaces, when the townspeople first boo Point and Elsie, check out for the sneer of chorus member Jim L. Maltese ’04.

Though this production has all the flaws and amateurishness of a typical mounting of the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players—namely barely adequate sets, an uneven orchestra and a laughably small chorus—the talent on stage has the Midas touch.

If you do only one last genuinely cultural thing before returning home for two weeks of solid Nintendo and sleeping in, make it a visit to Yeomen.