As a choice for a summer evening's entertainment, Iolanthe
starts out with two strikes against it. Strike one is that hardly anybody can
pronounce the name of the show at first glance. It's sort of like
"Puyallup" or "Sequim" that way. [Ed. note: pronounced
"Ploo-lal-liup" and "See-cue-um." Just wanted to see if you were
paying attention.] So to preclude any of our loyal readers from embarrassing
themselves in front of an opera snob, let's agree among ourselves that we will call it "eye-oh-lan-thee."
Practice this a few times while stuck in freeway traffic, and you should have it
cold by opening night.
Strike two is that the show is also called "The Peer and the Peri."
Be careful, this one's a curveball with a subtle pronunciation trap all its own.
"Peer" isn't so bad (compare it with "Pier 91," for
example), and I assume you have mastered the "thes" and the "and,"
but look out for "Peri"! This refers to some sort of evil spirit
from Persia (no, not the Ayatollah), and it has to be pronounced "Peery,"
or else a bunch of the songs don't rhyme.
So, who or what is an "Iolanthe," and what has it all got to do with
Peers and Peeries, and why do we care? Well, Iolanthe is the name of an elderly (by
a couple of hundred years) fairy who has the misfortune of always appearing to be
seventeen (poor dear). Being a youngster, she made a kid's mistake and married a
mortal. (Can't really blame her. Watch the show carefully and count all the
male fairies in it.) Not just any mortal, mind you, but the presiding noble of the
House of Lords. His close friends call him "The Lord Chancellor."
It turns out that, for some arcane reason, it is a capital offense for a fairy to
marry a mortal under Fairy Law. Fortunately, the old Fairy Queen had a soft spot for
Iolanthe and commuted her sentence to banishment for life (a fairly long sentence when one
is immortal) on the condition that she leave her husband and never tell him why.
But (just to keep the plot perking along) it seems that Iolanthe was a little bit
pregnant at the time of her banishment, and in the intervening 25 years had a son who is
now 24. And, it would seem (still perking along), that this young lad is (naturally
enough) half mortal and half fairy. In addition, he is a shepherd with a fiancée
who doesn't know anything about the slight confusion in his gene pool.
(I should digress here and explain that there are some significant lapses in the
logic of this plot. Since fairies always appear to be seventeen, why is the queen
older? - assuming she is. Since there are no fairies in evidence who are younger
than seventeen, are we to assume that they are born that way? Where do new fairies
come from? Does half of Iolanthe's son appear to be seventeen and the other half
appear to be 24? What did his other half look like when he was born? What will
half of him look like when he's 200? You see the problem.)
In any case, the Queen pardons Iolanthe so that she can go to her kid's wedding,
but the plot continues to thicken. His fiancée, it develops, is a ward of the court
and cannot marry without the consent of (can you feel it coming?) the Lord Chancellor!
At this very moment, the Lord Chancellor, with a bunch of his buddies from the
House of Lords, arrives on the scene for the annual Peers' Picnic. Part of the
festivities include deciding which of them gets to marry Phyllis, a beautiful young ward
of the court who lives nearby and happens to be engaged to a shepherd. (Oh-oh.)
You guessed it. Phyllis is the selfsame young lady who thinks she is going
to marry Iolanthe's son (who got himself named "Strephon" somehow, much to the
consternation of my computer's spelling checker).
The Lord Chancellor says, "No way" to marriage with a mere shepherd, and
poor Strephon turns to his mother for consolation. Bad timing on his part because he
forgot that his mother appears to be seventeen, and no matter how hard he plays the
"mother" card, Phyllis and the Peers just aren't buying it. Phyllis is so
mad after seeing him with a younger woman that she agrees to undertake to marry any two
peers they pick.
Well, Strephon isn't going to stand for this, so he calls in his aunts (the
fairies) and tries to explain what's going on. The fairies feel that they are being
seriously dissed by these pompous mortals, and the peers (who assume that the fairies are
inmates of a local boarding school) tell them to buzz off. Bad choice of words when
addressing the Queen of the Fairies.
The Queen is Not Amused. She gets wicked off and throws a hex on them that
won't quit. Not only does she put Strephon into Parliament, but she makes the Lords
pass every bill he introduces. One of the first ones he comes up with is to open up
the House of Lords to smart folks rather than just those with inherited titles. The
lords are so shook up that they march in circles and make pointed Greek remarks.
Come the second act, we finally meet a Gilbert & Sullivan character with an
I.Q. greater than that of a Springer Spaniel. Naturally, he is a military man with
no noble rank and title at all: Private Willis, B Company, 1st Grenadier Guards.
While spending long nights on sentry duty, he has developed a revolutionary theory
about how left-wing liberals and right-wing conservatives get that way.
Naturally, the Fairy Queen falls for him at first sight, but since fairy law
prohibits her marrying him, she quickly dials 911 and asks the fire department to hose her
down. (Really! It's right in the script.) Meanwhile, Phyllis is pretty
miserable because now she's engaged to two Pompous Jerks, and she doesn't like either one
of them. The two P.J.'s decide that they would rather give up Phyllis than break up
their friendship, and the Lord Chancellor (who has a yen for Phyllis himself) is having
nightmares and (worse yet) telling us about them in excruciating detail.
The two Pompous Jerks, in order to get rid of Phyllis, lay a bunch of old proverbs
on the Lord Chancellor in order to convince him that he should ask himself for permission
to marry Phyllis himself.
Strephon, now the leader of both parties in Parliament, is totally miserable
without Phyllis. When he finally runs into her, he breaks down and admits that he is
half fairy. She, naturally enough, is extremely interested in determining which half
is which (fore & aft, port & starboard, stem & stern, athwart, etc.) It
turns out that he is "top & bottom," although some of the other options
sound much more interesting.
Phyllis, thinking this arrangement is kinky but fun, admits she wanted to marry
him all along. Their hang-up now is that they still need the Lord Chancellor's
permission, so they call on "Mom" to persuade him. This forces Iolanthe to
admit that the L.C. really is her husband (not to mention Strephon's father), but she
agrees to talk to him as long as she doesn't have to tell him who she really is.
The old Lord Chancellor, in the meantime, has convinced himself, after long and
labored arguments with himself, that he should allow himself to marry Phyllis, himself.
Thus, the only way Iolanthe can convince him how stupid he himself is, is by
revealing who she herself is.
Well, obviously, learning that his long lost wife is alive (plus looking to be
about seventeen!) and that he was about to marry his future daughter-in-law, sort of
chokes the old boy up. It also chokes up the Fairy Queen because Iolanthe has once
again violated the fairy law and is in deep doo doo.
Just as the old girl is about to put the whammy on Iolanthe, the other fairies pop
up and admit that they have gone and married all the other Peers themselves. Whoops,
time to wipe out the entire women's chorus.
Rather than do that (we have to put on a show next season, you know), the Lord
Chancellor amends the Fairy Law so that it now reads, "All fairies must die who don't
marry mortals."
This makes everybody happy, the Fairy Queen turns everyone into fairies
(including, presumably, Strephon's other half), and they all flit off to fairyland.
But wait. Is that really all? What has actually happened is that all
of the fairies married mortals, which means they must die. Then the law was changed
so that they would die if the didn't marry mortals. Then the mortals they
married were all changed into fairies, which means that the original fairies must die
because the mortals they married are now fairies, and the new fairies (former mortals)
must, in turn marry different mortals or die.
Make sure you stay to the very end of this show to see if there are any survivors
for the curtain call.
--Mike Storie
