“Director Auxier-Loyola keeps the action wryly stylized, with plenty of winks at the audience …
Peppy and polished, this “Mikado” sets a standard for how to treat a classic with respect while keeping a clear eye on some of the blind spots of the original.”
– Margaret Quamme, The Columbus Dispatch
READ MORE” … That task has been tackled primarily by company member David Auxier, a terrific comic basso who has taken helm as director and choreographer of NYGASP’s re-imagined version of the piece, which has opened a limited run at Hunter College’s Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse.”
READ MORE” … Armed with great skepticism, I found myself won over by the show’s handsome designs, sharp acting and (for the most part) impressive singing, and came to admire the adroitness with which the director, David Auxier, defused the work’s most damaging cultural land mines.”
READ MOREEven those unfamiliar with the work of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan can appreciate the comedy that “I’ve Got a Little Twist” creates. The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players have a mission statement that they try to stay true to: Giving Vitality to the Living Legacy of Gilbert & Sullivan. The show will be performed at College of Lake County on May 9.
Executive Director of New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, David Wannen explained that showing timelessness was achieved by performing in three different ways. First, the players achieve it by keeping the pure magic and classic comedy of Gilbert & Sullivan’s musical theater.
READ MOREThe New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, described on their website as “America’s pre-eminent professional Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company,” will bring their tribute to the pair to Pueblo on Tuesday as part of the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center’s Center Stage Series. “I’ve Got a Little Twist” is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the arts center theater, 210 N. Santa Fe Ave.
The show, written and directed by troupe member David Auxier, offers plenty of Gilbert and Sullivan songs. It also includes works by those they influenced, including Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Lerner and Loewe and Meredith Wilson. Each song has the aforementioned “twist” — a reinterpretation, new lyrics, new arrangement or other deviation from the original.
READ MORE“Never Mind the Why and Wherefore” is still merrily dancing and skipping in my ear. Will I ever get it out? Why in the world would I want to?
“H. M. S. Pinafore” sailed into the Touhill last night filled to the gunwales with glorious music, spectacular voices, and wonderful, rich, gentle, bright comedy. This production, by the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, was simply perfect, and my heart cries for anyone who missed its one-night call at the port of St. Louis.
“Pinafore” (launched in 1878) was not Gilbert and Sullivan’s first comic opera, but it was their first smash hit, and it’s a grand show-case for the splendid musical and satirical gifts of this amazing pair. With numbers ranging from jolly music-hall songs, to stirring choruses, to duets, trios, madrigals and outright romantic arias Gilbert and Sullivan are magically able to both mock and sweetly embrace grand opera, melodrama, the class structure, the Royal Navy, and patriotism—as well as the very idea of being English.