Theater
Reviews - Vagabond King
Minneapolis Star Tribune
ENTERTAINMENT IS PLENTIFUL IN `THE VAGABOND KING'
By
David McKee
Published: Monday,
June 19, 1995
North
Star Opera's recipe for success - operetta done with affection and panache
- strikes pay dirt again with Rudolf Friml's "The
Vagabond King," which opened Friday night at the Drew Fine Arts Theater at
Hamline University in St. Paul. Although the show does not measure up to such
North Star successes as "The Desert Song" and "The Daughter of
the Regiment," entertainment is still plentiful.
The
scene: Paris, 1461. The rebellious armies of the Duke of Burgundy are at the
gates, starving the city into submission. While the milksop king, Louis XI,
dithers, the populace looks to "king of thieves" and poet Francois
Villon for charisma and leadership. When the king overhears Villon boast of what
he could would do were he king for a day, Louis offers Villon a deal: Rule the
country for 24 hours, then ascend the gallows. The only escape clause allows
Villon to save his life should he win the love of the fair Lady Katherine.
Twenty-four hours (and umpteen drinking songs) later, Villon proves himself more
of a monarch than the king.
"The
Vagabond King" is an object lesson in how far one can get on craft. Friml
apparently thought, "Why use a good tune once when I can use it six or
seven times more?" Yet despite the score's repetitiveness, one never tires
of its pseudo-Viennese flavor.
True,
the old text has been goosed with a fair complement of new double entendres, and
director Greg Smucker hasn't resisted the occasional impulse to be camp. For the
most part, he plays fair, and his efforts, combined with the choreography of
Catherine Gasiorowicz and fight-direction of Julia Fisher, make for kinetic,
watchable theater.
It
does not hurt to have Peter Halverson's Villon at the center. It's always a
pleasure to hear his lyric baritone rolling through such congenial music. His
lady love, Peggy Joyce, is a sweet and urgent ingenue, but has suffered a weird
vocal bifurcation: Operatic top notes split off from a bottled, backward middle
voice.
More
velvety and affecting is the sensual and well-knit singing of Kathleen Humphrey
as Villon's rejected lover, while royal sidekick Eric Levos energizes the comedy
with his rubbery physical shtick and well-appointed singing. Hazen Markoe is his
splenetic self as the chief villain, and Mary Frankson's Royal Astrologer
provides a brief, manic zing of hilarity. The greatest larceny is that of
Stephen Lundberg's Tabarie, Villon's scene-swiping confederate. A Falstaffian
figure with a cannon for a voice and a capacity for endless pratfalls, Lundberg
is the show's sparkplug. Steven Stucki's conducting brings its accustomed lilt,
but is somewhat heavy and overbrassy. Costuming is sumptuous, and if some of
Joseph Stanley's designs look tatty and cheap, the courtly tableaux are most
evocative.
David McKee is
classical music critic for the Twin Cities Reader.
