The Yeomen of the Guard

Show Description:

In its combination of comedy and pathos, and the human, rather than farcical, qualities of its characters, The Yeomen of the Guard holds a unique place among the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. In an inheritance scam by a scheming relative, the bearded Colonel Fairfax has been condemned to death and is to be executed at the Tower of London. Sergeant Meryll, of the Yeomen of the Guard, concocts a plan whereby his son Leonard, arriving to join the Yeomen, will go into hiding and be impersonated by a beardless, unrecognizable Fairfax, thus providing time to seek a pardon. In order to thwart his unscrupulous kinsman, Fairfax begs the Tower Lieutenant to find him a wife. Meanwhile, jester Jack Point and his intended bride, the strolling singer Elsie Maynard, have arrived in town. The Lieutenant confronts Elsie and, with the promise of 100 crowns and an assurance to Jack that her new husband will soon be dead, Elsie is blindfolded, whisked away, and married to Fairfax. But the plan goes awry…. Both Gilbert and Sullivan felt that Yeomen was their finest collaboration. There are few, if any, songs in the operetta repertoire as sincere and emotionally grabbing as Jack and Elsie’s “I Have a Song to Sing, O!”