Walt and I started going to The Lamplighters Musical Theater in the 1960s. I had been raised by a father who told me Gilbert & Sullivan was the worst music ever and I was surprised when Walt took me to a production of HMS Pinafore at UC Berkeley and I liked it. We found out that San Francisco had a G&S company and so we started going to each production until we had seen them all.
We got ushering tickets so we didn't have to pay, and if it was a particularly good production, we would usher more than once. There were several that I really loved, but The Mikado was my favorite...and I became a big fan of Gilbert Russak, who played KoKo, one of his most popular roles.
We were on the newsletter of the company and got a notice that a woman was going to write a history of the Lamplighters for their 25th anniversary and was looking for volunteers.
Two of us signed up and the three of us were all the same age, all had kids in the same situation and we were so alike. We worked together very well and produced "The Lamplighters: 25 Years of Gilbert and Sullivan in San Francisco.
After the book was published, I was asked if I would like to volunteer to help put all of the names of subscribers into their new computer--my first experience using a computer. Over the course of doing that job, several things happened. I started learning how to use a computer, I found other things that I could help with and became a weekly volunteer, and Gilbert and I became good friends.
Over the next several years, I became a member of the company, was deeply involved in every production, and made friends who became some of my best friends.
At one time, the co-founder of the company, Ann Pool McNab and Georgia Prugh, one of the leading sopranos, came to a show. Both women were, by now, good friends of mine and I was so pleased to show them how far the company had come since they left. As I stood with them and watched the audience milling about talking bout the show, I was surprised, and a bit disappointed, that neither Ann nor Georgia seemed to be at all interested.
I continued to work with the company until July 1984, when Gilbert died suddenly. It was a tremendous loss for me and I found I could not continue to volunteer, though I did stick around to help write a couple of shows. But eventually, I stopped volunteering. Walt and I continued to go to shows...now you go to see how your friends perform, not to see what the show is like. We don't go regularly any more, but still see a show now and then.
I received a newsletter the other day from the board of directors and realized I didn't recognize a single name of the people who now run the company. The current production is the new version of The Mikado. Asians in San Francisco always gave the company a bad time when they do Mikado because they felt it was a slam at Asians, though Gilbert & Sullivan wrote it at a time when there was a big Japanese presence in London and this was a take on the British government, with a Japanese slant. But because of the Asians in SF who didn't like it, the company rewrote the show, making it Italian, now called Il Ducato. I saw it the first time they did it--and they've done a magnificent job of keeping as much of G&S in the show, but removing all the Japanese.
But it's Mikado, my favorite G&S show. And it's being performed mostly by people whose names I don't know and the company is run by people I mostly don't know. The conductor is making his debut...Gilbert was the conductor and is role was taken over by someone else I knew, for the past 30+ years, but now there is a new conductor.
Now I understand how Ann and Georgia felt when they came to the show I was so proud of, how they just didn't care any more because it wasn't their company any more. That's how I feel about the Lamplighters today. Walt is off seeing Il Ducato today and I have stayed home. I have zero desire to see my favorite G&S show done in Italian with people I don't know.
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
(Will Connelly died a few years later)
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