Iolanthe LIVESTREAM

PLEASE NOTE: This listing is for the online livestream of Iolanthe. After purchasing your ticket, you will be emailed a link to view the stream to the email you used to register for Showclix. Please be patient; this process may take up to 5 minutes to complete. If you have still not received your email after 10 minutes, please check your spam/junk mail folder. If you are still having trouble, please contact information@pittsburghsavoyards.org and we will be happy to assist you.

After the livestream is finished, an archive recording of the performance will be available at the same link for one week.

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Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe, or: The Peer and the Peri (originally produced 1882) presents a conflict between two very different worlds. On one hand, we have the world of the immortal fairies – all female, somewhat trippy and chaotic, and ruled by a queen; on the other, we have the world of British parliamentary peers – all male, stodgy and precise, and subject to the law as interpreted by the Lord Chancellor. The operetta presents a political satire wrapped around a love story: the fairy Iolanthe’s half-human son Strephon loves the Lord Chancellor’s ward Phyllis, but the Lord Chancellor wishes to marry her to a peer – namely himself. The fairies come to Strephon’s aid, install him in parliament, and cast a spell on the other members of parliament to make them pass any law Strephon proposes. Along the way we get any number of satirical digs at the British system of law and government (lampooning, among other things, the intellectual fitness of members of the House of Lords and the honesty and honorableness of lawyers).