It’s the time of year when singers and musicians from all over the Delaware Valley area converge to rehearse and perform the unique musical confections that are Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. This season the Bucks County Gilbert & Sullivan Society has chosen to perform Iolanthe, which is considered by aficionados to have the most beautiful score of any works of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s collaborations with W. S. Gilbert.
I am again pleased to have created the poster for this musically brilliant show. Iolanthe‘s subtitle is “The Peer and the Peri” and it tells the fanciful story of a “peri” – a Persian word for a fairy – and the peers in Parliament, that is, members of the House of Lords. Because a premise in the show is that fairies are all beautiful and never age, I was reminded of art nouveau posters – these are posters like the one below by Alphonse Mucha at the turn of the 20th century, which celebrated the beauty of women and nature in luxuriantly stylized designs.
In this story Iolanthe is a lovely fairy who, twenty-five years ago, made the terrible transgression of marrying a mortal, which goes against fairy law. For this she was banished from fairy society by the Queen of the fairies, and while in exile she had a son, Strephon, who grew up as a shepherd. When the show opens, Strephon, who is half-fairy and half-mortal, is now a handsome young man in love with a sweet maiden, Phyllis. Problems arise when we learn that Phyllis’ beauty is such that all the members of the House of Lords are also desperately in love with her! And they wish to prevent Strephon from making her his bride.
I started sketching my design, borrowing the circle and column elements from the Mucha poster. I wanted Iolanthe large as she is the title character, but as with all G&S shows, this is really an ensemble cast and so I wanted to include several other characters, smaller, grouped nearby, also as in the Mucha poster. This rough pencil sketch below shows the main elements – in the column area I planned to do foliage with some some distinctive set pieces intertwined among the leaves.
After I took some good photos of the actual cast members I tightened up the sketch. I hand-lettered the title, as did many art nouveau poster artists, emulating their 19th century poster style.
I drew and then digitally colored the decorative column spot drawings – these are based on sketches of the set by our wonderful scenic designer, Henry Heymann. These set pieces will be quite large onstage, giving the magical effect that we are watching a dream-like story unfold. I hid these among the column’s foliage designs, with some tiny fairies sprinkled in. I also placed some fairies flitting around with musical instruments in that column, because I love to reference our terrific orchestra – they add so much to the experience of listening to our shows with their grand symphonic sound.
I digitally colored my larger drawings for the poster, and then put them all together with the text, and the final result is below – my modern interpretation of an art nouveau poster for Iolanthe.
I expect this to be a beautiful show, with exceptionally lovely music! We have a terrific cast of singers and the Bucks County Gilbert & Sullivan Orchestra will accompany everyone with their always-magnificent sound. If you are in the Doylestown are in June, please join us for this funny, radiant musical – for more info about Bucks G&S click HERE . Tickets for Iolanthe can be purchased at the door, and you save on the price if you order online HERE.