Review: “Yeomen of the Guard” at the Light Opera Theatre of Sacramento

Arthur Sullivan was more interested in writing serious music than comic operas, but the comic operas were his bread and butter. After Ruddygore (his 10th collaboration with W.S. Gilbert), he had the chance to write something completely different, inspired by Gilbert’s view of a picture of the guards at the Tower of London.

There’s a lot of funny stuff in Yeomen of the Guard, now produced by Light Opera Theatre of Sacramento, but its primary theme is death and sadness. There’s torture, beheadings, mistaken identities, unrequited romances … and not everybody lives happily ever after.

But the music is fantastic, and under the direction of Anne-Marie Endres, the opera’s 30-piece orchestra plays it gloriously.

It’s also a dream cast. Robert Vann is Colonel Fairfax, wrongly accused, who marries a randomly chosen, blindfolded woman to divert his fortune away from the cousin who wrongly accused him. Vann could not be more perfect.

Also outstanding is Carley Neill as Elsie Maynard, the woman who arrives at the Tower with her performing partner Jack Point (Charlie Baad) to earn money to save her ill mother. When she’s offered 100 crowns to marry a condemned prisoner who will die in an hour, she agrees.

Baad is the epitome of the bitter funny man, also in love with Elsie. The end of the story for his character has been a controversy among Gilbert and Sullivan fans ever since 1888.

This is the best Gilbert and Sullivan Sacramento has seen in a long while.