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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

July 12, 2002

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eveningsout

'Patience' lampoons

Oscar Wilde's movement

by Richard Berrong

Cleveland-Lyric Opera's second production of the summer, Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, offers several things of particular interest for Northeast Ohio's gay audience. I spoke about it with conductor Dennis Northway and director Philip Kraus, themselves a gay couple, who have come to Cleveland to develop this production.

Patience was Gilbert's 1881 send-up of aestheticism, a late nineteenth-century English literary and artistic movement that sought to cast aside what it saw as the materialistic preoccupations of contemporary life for what it viewed as the more ethereal, super-worldly mindset of previous eras, such as antiquity and the Middle Ages.

In literature, the leaders of this movement were Algernon Swinbourne and a still very young Oscar Wilde, whom Gilbert took particular delight in lampooning. So much so, in fact, that Richard D'Oyly Carte, the show's original producer, sent Wilde on a lecture tour of the United States, where he spoke on "House Beautiful," so that Americans would get the joke when D'Oyly Carte subsequently brought Patience to North America.

While much of Gilbert's ridicule of Wilde focuses on his exaggerated mannerisms, dress, and language, conductor Northway also sees Patience as "the theatrical version of the earliest installment of the Celluloid Closet." For both he and Kraus, Patience demonstrates the extent to which one could suggest, however indirectly, the topic of homosexuality in Victorian English theater.

Kraus and Northway believe that Patience is a must-see work for gays for this reason. It shows, they argue, how popular English theater during the Victorian era went about suggesting what was still the secret of Wilde's homosexuality, experimenting with the limits of what late nineteenth-century English and American audiences would accept. (Wilde was not to be publicly outed by his trial for another 14 years.) This is one of the reasons why Northway and Kraus particularly enjoy having a chance to stage the work, and one of the aspects that they are developing.

Another reason they enjoy being involved with Lyric Opera Cleveland's Patience is that it gives them a relatively rare opportunity to work together. Both live in Chicago, where Kraus directs the opera program at Roosevelt University and Northway is parish musician at Grace Episcopal Church in Oak Park. While both are very involved in the musical and theatrical worlds there, they seldom get to work together professionally.

One such opportunity, however, has been their creation of Handel Week in Oak Park.

For a week every year, Kraus exchanges his directing cap for that of a baritone while partner Northway leads him and others in sampling the wide variety of Handel's music. In the past, both have also worked with Chicago's Light Opera Works, a company similar to the Ohio Light Opera that specializes in the production of classic musicals and operettas.

Otherwise, their careers take them in all

'Patience' demonstrates the extent to which one could suggest, however indirectly, the topic of homosexuality in

Victorian English theater.

directions. In addition to his church work in the Chicago area, Northway travels to Owensboro, Kentucky, every week to direct their symphony orchestra chorus and that of Kentucky Wesleyan College. He also performs as tenor soloist in oratorio, musical and operetta, and lieder. A prolific composer, largely of organ music, he publishes with Belwin Mills.

His partner, Kraus, is equally versatile. In addition to directing Roosevelt University's opera program, he founded and directed for eighteen seasons Light Opera Works, where his most recent coup was producing and directing the first American production of Emmrich Kalman's The Duchess of Chicago. Like his partner, he also sings. He has appeared for twelve seasons with Lyric Opera of Chicago, performing Drs. Dulcamara in The Elixir of Love and Bartolo in The Barber of Seville among other roles. In Northeast Ohio he was Sir Joseph Porter in Cleveland Opera's recent production of H.M.S. Pinafore.

Northeast Ohio's gay community will have a chance to see the particular slant this couple gives a Gilbert and Sullivan classic when Lyric Opera Cleveland presents Patience at the Cleveland Play House's Drury Theater July 13 and 18 at 7:00 p.m. and July 14 at 2:00. Evening performances include a onehour intermission for those who choose to bring a picnic dinner. For tickets and further information, call 216 795-7000 ext. 4.

Richard M. Berrong is a freelance writer living in Kent, Ohio.

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