If New York City did not have its very own Albert Bergeret, we would need to invent — or at least import — him. Since 1974, Mr. Bergeret, the artistic director of the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, has done yeoman’s work guarding and promoting the peerless operettas and traditions of the English duo for which his company is named. A life without opportunities to hear those witty, wise pieces performed faithfully is not something I care to think about.
The players’ present season, which seems to wax and wane in size as the years go by, included just one of the “big three” operettas it regularly mounts, “The Pirates of Penzance.” (The other two are “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “The Mikado.”) “The Pirates” duly dispatched, the company took its customary turn toward less-familiar fare on Friday night with “Patience,” starting a three-day, four-show run at Symphony Space.
The sixth collaboration of Gilbert and Sullivan, “Patience” was the first stage production ever lit entirely with electricity when it came to London’s newly built Savoy Theater in October 1881, after a premiere at the Opéra Comique in April. A pointed lampoon of the 19th-century Aesthetic movement, which emphasized beauty, taste and refinement over pragmatic and didactic concerns in literature and art, it was the duo’s biggest hit to date.
If the show has not retained its primacy, part of the blame belongs to an increasing unfamiliarity with the targets of its satire: artists like the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne and the painter James McNeill Whistler. It’s also fair to say that “Patience” is less richly endowed with indelible musical numbers of the sort that populate the duo’s most famous works.
On the other hand, Gilbert’s pen was rarely sharper than when he invented Reginald Bunthorne, a flamboyant, foppish aesthetic poet. The object of affection for 20 lovesick maidens, much to the consternation of the bluff dragoon guards to whom they were formerly engaged, Bunthorne is secretly a sham who craves attention and pines only for Patience, the simple, plain-spoken village milkmaid.
James Mills played Bunthorne to the hilt, fawning and prancing with willowy abandon. Sarah Caldwell Smith was a sweet-voiced, amiably blank Patience. David Macaluso sang ably and acted admirably as the pastoral poet Archibald Grosvenor, Bunthorne’s rival and Patience’s long-lost childhood love.
Secondary roles provide some of the richest opportunities in the Savoy canon, which the players are always keen to seize. David Wannen, Matthew Wages and Daniel Greenwood were terrific as the dragoon officers. Erika Person, Amy Maude Helfer and Meredith Borden did vibrant work as their opposite numbers among the maidens.
Cáitlín Burke’s ample voice and physical gusto made a three-dimensional character of the aged but determined Lady Jane; when she and Mr. Mills teamed up, the results were genuinely uproarious. Mr. Bergeret, at stage left conducting a small pit orchestra hidden behind a banner throughout, provided watchful, tuneful support.