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REVIEW Review: OSF's "The Yeomen of the Guard" riffs on classic Gilbert & Sullivan Comment By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Feb. 28, 2016 at 6:52 PM Updated Feb 28, 2016 at 11:06 PM By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Feb. 28, 2016 at 6:52 PM Updated Feb 28, 2016 at 11:06 PM » Social News For Sean Graney, a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta is no museum piece. In the hands of Graney, the artistic director and a founding member of Chicago’s The Hypocrites theater company, those funny takes on Victorian society are themselves targets for satire, morphing into, say, a circus or a beach party or, in the case of “The Yeomen of the Guard,” a tongue-deep-in-the-cheek cowboy jamboree. “Yeomen,” the adaptation of which debuted Saturday afternoon in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s intimate Thomas Theatre, is the first Gilbert and Sullivan show Graney and his artistic collaborators/partners in crime, Andra Velis Simon and Matt Kahler, have created — some might say savaged — outside the friendly confines of their home turf. The production is also the OSF’s first experiment with “promenade seating,” in which several dozen audience members are not only seated on the stage among the actors but are free to move about during the show. We’re not talking the periphery of the stage here, but right there among the props and the actors. The show slashes the original to pieces, cutting it to about 90 minutes, breaking the fourth wall and gleefully trampling the wreckage underfoot, surely setting composer Arthur Sullivan, if not librettist W.S. Gilbert, who didn’t take himself quite as seriously as his partner, to doing the roly-poly dance somewhere in that great Savoy Theatre in the sky. You could compare what Graney & Co. do to Gilbert and Sullivan to what jazz musicians do to a song — if the musicians were Spike Jones and the City Slickers and fronted by "Weird Al" Yankovic, on nitrous oxide. The script, like a score, is something to riff on. But the bones are still there. War hero Fairfax (Jeremy Peter Johnson) is to be executed in the morning on a bum rap of “congress with the devil.” His cousin, Warden Carruthers (K.T. Vogt), will inherit his estate. But Major Meryll (Joseph Anthony Foronda) and his daughter, Phoebe (Britney Simpson), concoct a plan to save him by smuggling him out disguised as the Meryll’s son Leonard, who is actually dead, but never mind that. Meanwhile, thanks in no small part to the incompetence of goofball jailer, Shadbolt (Michael Sharon), Fairfax manages to marry Elsie (Kate Hurster), who will inherit his goods and thwart the Warden’s plan. Y’all got that? G&S’s Jack Point has become Jan Point, Elsie’s partner in the busking Point Sisters. There’s a whole passel of singin’ and dancin’, country style, from Appalachian ballads to the smooth Nashville sound of Patsy Cline by way of Jim Reeves, with nods at slick backup groups like the Jordanaires. The actors sing and strum guitars and play accordion and other instruments, often backed by a couple musicians whose dobro and electric bass and such are bounced around the stage electronically. Choreographer Jaclyn Miller acquitted herself admirably, weaving the movements of the players through the prison, the town, a bar, a couple of rocking horses and all those spectators diving out of the way of the performers. Speaking of which, some of the audience members seemed to anticipate movements with some precision. Is it possible there were some ringers among the folks who bought tickets? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just wondering. Two things must be said. One, all this loosey-goosey tomfoolery is very funny. Two, the original mixed the laughs with a darker vein and was in fact its creators’ most serious Savoy opera. If you believe that new takes on classics — and Gilbert and Sullivan get re-imagined almost as often as Shakespeare — should hew to the spirit of the original, this ain’t your baby. And yet, Graney isn’t sending up Gilbert and Sullivan. He’s sending up human foibles, as G&S did. Broadly, wink wink, with a big elbow to our collective ribs. —Reach freelance writer Bill Varble at varble.bill @gmail.com. By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Bill Varble for the Mail Tribune Posted Feb. 28, 2016 at 6:52 PM Updated Feb 28, 2016 at 11:06 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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