Yeomen of the Guard: A Review and Reflection

Two of my very best Oxford friends went with me tonight to see the Oxford University Gilbert and Sullivan Society's Presentation of The Yeomen of the Guard. G&S musicals are on my list of "things I ought to know more about to consider myself cultured," so I'm always delighted to see one of them performed. The musicals are tightly wound social satires of Victorian personalities and mores, but, at the same time, brilliant commentaries on human nature. Usually they straddle that line I spoke of earlier, of the dark comedy which the British do so well. But Yeomen is an exception: it isn't really funny.

The Yeomen of the Guard takes place in the Tower of London in the sixteenth century. A brave, young solider has been condemned to die for practicing alchemy. A man whose life he once saved and his smitten daughter conspire to save him by changing his place with their own son/brother. In the meantime, he decides to take a wife in order to keep his fortune from passing into the hands of his envious cousin. A typical G&S comedy of errors ensues, but the players and consequences are more than common.

Perhaps most unlike Gilbert and Sullivan's other musicals, there are no happy weddings at the end of Yeomen. The young woman who loves the solider is forced into an engagement to the hunch-backed jailer to protect the soldier's escape from being found out--the audience is encouraged to feel sympathy toward the bumbling figure, but the young woman never learns to love him. Simliarly, her father agrees to marry a unattractive, violent old maid to keep his assistance for the soldier safe. The only happily married couple are the solider and the woman whom he married to protect his fortune. Even they were first married in secret, identities protected, before discovering they've fallen in love with each other. And they leave behind a doful jester, the bride's jilted betrothed, who is the key tragic figure of the play. In him the audience sees the human cost of a "the-show-must-go-on" attitude, and of one character's self-centered choices.

Of course, the musical does have its comic moments. As a linguist, I was particularly delighted by the intentionally over-done Shakespearean English of the dialog ("An hundred crowns?" "An hundred crowns!). The song sung between jailer and jester is a particularly nice touch: the jester tries to nuance the clueless jailer's lies by added literary flourish that the poor man simply can't understand.

The OUG&S production also had particular assets of its own, most especially in the cast. The female leads were all well sung, particularly the solider's bride's lilting and subdued soprano. Robert Hazel, who played the bumbling assistant jailer, did an absolutely spectular job of making the character come to life in a way that was both physically repellant and intensely sympathetic. The musical, however, was essentially made by the truly enthralling performance of David Jones as the jester. He conveys all of the jesters desparate need to be funny, but also his bitter resentment against a life which has put little that's good or delightful before him. He beautifully pulled off an imaginably difficult role--the tragic jester--in a mesmirizing way.

Still, all in all, The Yeomen of the Guard is as much food for thought than entertainment--as much "sentence" than "solas," to use the Chaucerian distinction. The young solider is again and again praised, admired, and loved because of his bravery. But it is really those who risk their lives to save him who are brave. And it is they who suffer in this deeply thought-provoking musical.