Word: shadbolt
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...sturdy core of talented principals proves Yeomen's most valuable asset. Foremost among them is a new face: freshman Erica Zabusky. As Phoebe Meryll, who pines for the condemned Colonel Fairfax while fighting off the advances of his repulsive jailer Wilfred Shadbolt, Zabusky steals every scene she plays. She admirably avoids a problem that bogs down several of the other players: she is at ease and unselfconscious with Gilbert's archaic ods-bodkins-laced dialogue that so easily calls clumsy attention to itself. Her pure, clear mezzo-soprano enchants and, although her flirting with Colonel Fairfax gets her nowhere with...
...some other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas--there's nothing here to compare, for example, with the posturings of the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe or Katisha's ravings in The Mikado--but they still offer marvelous opportunities for comic mugging. Scott Meadow turns in a sharply defined performance as Wilfred Shadbolt, the "assistant tormentor" who eventually wins Phoebe's hand (but not her heart). A typical Gilbert and Sullivan "light heavy," Meadow's Wilfred is too ridiculously self-important and gullible to be really threatening. Carol Flynn also has a few funny moments as awesome Dame Carruthers, responding rapturously...
Imagine, if you will, for one heart-stopping moment a production of The Yeomen of the Guard that included Doris Day as Phoebe Meryll, Joey Bishop as Jack Point, Jerry Lewis as Wilfrid Shadbolt, and a Colonel Fairfax whose singing voice is an engaging blend of Richard Dyer-Bennett and Rudy Vallee; and having in this manner proved yourself capable of the requisite amount of mental contortion, return with the now to consider briefly a new production of the Yeomen by the Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players that I and others sat through last night...
David Stone as Wilfred Shadbolt the jailer makes a splendid clod, and John Scullin (a good-sing-no-act tenor), Alison Keith, Judith Spritzer, and the rest rally round successfully in other capacities...