San Francisco’s inimitable Lamplighters Music Theater took their art to new heights as the musical troupe broke through age prejudices and even more important, class barriers on a very special weekend in Mid-May.
This musical is set in post World War One and the in the post war influenza epidemic millions of lives were lost leaving behind heartfelt yearnings seeking to break through end of life barriers and reach across to beloved’s whose souls were presuming to reside in an afterlife that could be accessed with an appropriate professional intermediary. Enter Hugh Wellington Wells of a multigenerational supernatural access firm.
The theme of intergenerational intimacy is initiated by a young woman with a yen for an ageing pastor who regrets not having found a soulmate in his youth and assumes it is too late despite the young woman’s importunings. Her mother blesses the potential union and offers to intercede on her daughter’s behalf.
English class barriers only break down under extraordinary circumstances like wartime when everyone pulls together and interacts without the formal introduction prerequisite of peace time, a 50 percent tariff on entrepreneurship and innovation.
Love similarly constricted has left a village full of lonely souls. Nevertheless, the economic constructions have brought the classes into closer contiguity as hotels substitute for fully staffed elite houses with rigid upstairs downstairs separations as depicted in “Downton Abbey” with only secretive liaisons among the classes. Indeed many of the former great houses have become hotels catering to the upper middle classes who like to enjoy a brief upper class experience, even as a long weekend package such a hotel is the primary venue of the musical escapade in which a sorcerer potion blinds all to class barriers and unheard of pairings occur first socio-disadvantage barriers to loosen the audiences deception and then when trust has been attained across class barriers. Of course, the suspension is only temporary since the objective is to btitskte and amuse rather than to shock and promote social change.
The pairing of a 20 something with a wheel chaired 97 year old is a reduction to the absurd in conception but has realistic pairing in the sense of unequals meeting each others needs. Like replaces well as attracts like while differences may find a fit with each other. Gilbert and Sullivan reflecting changing gender relations insurgents era in which tradition sold liberation were in conflict with various accommodations possible as illustrated in the couplings decoupling and recouping depicted. Theoretically these alternatives have been depicted as feminism and womanism. Feminism posits the equality of genders as social constructs, holding that sexual differences can be overcome if not eliminated. Womanism holds for the primacy of sexual differences with social structures taking account of women’s unique roles as child bearers and early childhood readers at least through breast feeding that creates a unique bond between mother and child. The relative importance of biological and social factors is differently weighted in each thesis. Social structures may be overturned in a drop of a hat, but Gilbert and Sullivan glorify traditional norms of social relations, class and gender. Not surprisingly, they are womanists, not feminist. Nevertheless satirizing tradition has a certain radical but ingenious quality. Set to rollicking music, paradoxical lyrics set audiences thinking as well as enjoying.
Lamplighters ensemble performance in which the troupe is the star shows the bay area a group that is a worthy successor to their London inspiration. Costumes and sets were also up to London standards.
All photo credits to Lucas Buxman.
Lamplighters Music Theater will return soon
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