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Artistic
Director
Ralph MacPhail, Jr.
Professor
of Theatre, Communication Studies, and English emeritus
Artistic Director, The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin |
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 Ralph
MacPhail, Jr., was born in Arlington, Virginia, on the 64th
anniversary of "the Pinafore Riot" at London's
Opéra
Comique in 1879. (The task of calculating his age he'd rather
leave to you.)
He received a B.A. in English from Bridgewater
College in Virginia, served in the U. S. Army in Viet Nam,
and then took his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Theatre (Directing
Emphasis) from Virginia Commonwealth University.
In 1972, he returned to his alma mater Bridgewater College as Instructor of Theatre,
Speech, and English and Director of Theatre, and retired as Professor emeritus
in May of 2005. During that time he directed 66 full-length plays and musicals
at the college and many smaller productions as well.
In 1966, the original Gilbert & Sullivan troupe, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company,
visited Washington, D.C., and MacPhail saw three productions in one week. "My
life hasn't been the same since," he admits, "for I was totally smitten
with the colorful, tuneful, and traditional productions, and I promptly began
seeking books and records (and anything else for that matter) connected with
'G&S'."
Five years later he put his new scholarship (and library) to
work as a part of his Master of Fine Arts thesis project at
Virginia Commonwealth University; it
consisted of productions of the full-length version of Sir Arthur Sullivan's
first comic opera Cox and Box and Sir William S. Gilbert's Shakespearean burlesque
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. (The Cox and Box research was subsequently expanded
and published in 1974 in a small monograph on the history of Sullivan's comic
opera and the farce that formed its basis. The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern research
was subsequently expanded and presented as "Bab and the Bard: Gilbert's
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" at the W. S. Gilbert Sesquicentennial Conference
at M.I.T. in 1986.)
MacPhail
directed six productions of Savoy operas at Bridgewater College,
but
most of his "G&S" directorial work has been done for other theatres:
Oak Grove Theatre, the Shenandoah Valley Choral Society, the Richmond Opera Company,
Barksdale Theatre, the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Northwest Louisiana,
the
Virginia Commonwealth University Opera Theatre, and
most recently the Austin Gilbert & Sullivan Society, for whom he has directed
eleven productions since the summer of 1998. In the fall of 2005, he was
named the Society's first Artistic Director, and he is looking forward to returning
during the summer of 2012 to direct his second production in Austin of Patience;
or, Bunthorne's Bride.
 Scholarship has taken him to the Gilbert & Sullivan Archive the
Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, Sir Arthur Sullivan's Diaries at the Beinecke
Rare
Book Library at Yale, the W. S. Gilbert Papers at the British Library, and (thanks
to the permission of the Late Dame Bridget D'Oyly Carte) the D'Oyly Carte Opera
Company Archive at the Theatre Museum in London. "It was indeed a moving
experience
to
take
notes
from the 1885 promptbook for the original production of The Mikado--and
to compare this resource with the promptbooks subsequently used in revivals and
by touring
companies in the decades that followed," he notes. Dame Bridget also made
available the brittle and yellowing Company "press books" containing
original reviews--gold mines of specifics regarding the original production.
Other scholarly activities include an invitational book review
of Harold Orel's
Gilbert & Sullivan: Interviews and Recollections for English Literature
in
Transition: 1880-1920 and the "Gilbert & Sullivan" entry for G.
A. Cevasco's The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture.
During the several years, he has reviewed three Gilbert & Sullivan-related
book proposals and manuscripts for Oxford University Press, and his endorsements
appear on the dust-jackets of two of these books (and another published by Associated
University Presses of London, Canada, and the U.S.).
The Mikado has continued to be the focus of MacPhail's research. In addition
to annotating the original 1885 libretto, he has given much attention to The
Swing Mikado (the 1938-39 "black" production by the Federal Theatre
Project), The Hot Mikado (producer Michael Todd's competing production), and "The
Red Mikado" (Harold Rome and Joseph Schrank's satirical sketch on these
two productions which formed a part of the long-running revue Pins and Needles).
The results of this research were shared at the Basingstoke! Gilbert & Sullivan
conference at West Chester University and before a more diverse audience at the
Federal Theatre Festival at the Institute of New Deal Culture, George Mason University.
Subsequently, he shared his researches on these shows at the first Gilbert & Sullivan
Festival Symposium in Buxton, England; with the Gilbert & Sullivan Society
of London; at most recently at the Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester.
In retirement, MacPhail hopes to pull all of these scripts and their histories
together for a book called The Mikado: Red, Hot, and Swing!
His interest in The Mikado has led to interesting adventures and surprising
phone
calls. He was invited by the Curator of the Gilbert & Sullivan Collection
at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York to help with the initial selection
of treasures to form the basis for the 1985 exhibition "The Mikado:
A Centenary
Celebration," and one day he received a call from director Peter Sellars
who was planning his contemporary interpretation of The Mikado for the
Lyric Opera of Chicago. Several years ago, British film director Mike Leigh's
researcher
Rosie Chambers called MacPhail from London seeking information on the original
production of The Mikado while preparing background information for Topsy-Turvy,
Mr. Leigh's acclaimed film on Gilbert & Sullivan and their sometimes-tempestuous
creative process.
 More recent Mikadoings (in addition to last summer's GSSA production)
include
staging
the
comic
opera
for the Virginia Commonwealth University Opera theatre in Richmond, Virginia,
during
the spring of 2008, and recording in Los Angeles an on-camera interview for the
Criterion Collection 2011 release on DVD of the 1939 film of The Mikado.
(He
also provided Criterion with vintage images from his collection to illustrate
the supplements to this release and the concurrent release of Mike Leigh's film
Topsy-Turvy.)
MacPhail also carries on an extensive correspondence with Gilbert & Sullivan
scholars, performers, collectors and enthusiasts throughout the English-speaking
world. And for five years in the 1990s he hosted SavoyNet, the International
Gilbert & Sullivan Internet Bulletin Board, from the information technology
center at Bridgewater College. He is also serving on the editorial board of The
Gilbert Edition, an ambitious project with the goal to bring all of W. S. Gilbert's
writings together between covers of a multi-volume set--and perhaps "publish" the
same in CD-ROM format, and in April 2007 he was invited to join the Editorial
Board of Broude Brothers' critical edition of the operas of Gilbert & Sullivan.
MacPhail taught Gilbert & Sullivan Elderhostel courses
for five years at Bridgewater College in the 1980s, and, for
fifteen years, taught Gilbert & Sullivan Road Scholar (Elderhostel)
Courses at Incarnation Center in Ivoryton, Connecticut. In
June of 2012, he will offer an Elderhostel course, open to
the public, on H.M.S. Pinafore at the Warwick Center
in Warwick, New York (www.roadscholar.org). Since
retiring from Bridgewater College, he also traveled to Medford,
Oregon,
three times to teach such courses at Rogue Valley Manor.
He lectured on The Mikado at
the University of Michigan for the Fulbright Society, and closer
to his home--two blocks away, in fact--he taught a course for
the local Lifelong Learning Institute on H.M.S. Pinafore.
He also enjoys making informal presentations to local community
groups interested in the Savoy operas.
In February 1999 he spoke at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York on the Gilbert/Sullivan/D'Oyly Carte collaboration--the
last of a series of three lectures celebrating the 75th Anniversary
of New York's Blue Hill Troupe. This led to an invitation to
return to New York several weeks later to participate in a
symposium on updating Gilbert & Sullivan.
The symposium was a part of the New York Gilbert & Sullivan
Players' 25th anniversary, celebrated on Broadway at Symphony
Space.
 In May of 2010, he delivered the first Jay Newman Memorial
Lecture on Gilbert and Sullivan and the Pierpont Morgan Library
at the invitation of the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of
New York. The next day he returned to Austin to begin staging
The Yeomen of the Guard, which received seven B. Iden Payne
Award nominations, including Outstanding Production of Music
Theatre and Outstanding Director of Music Theatre. Between
performance weekends of The Yeomen of the Guard in Austin,
he flew to Shreveport to refresh his production of Gilbert’s
Sweethearts, originally staged in 2009, for production in Louisiana
before being transported to the North American leg of International
Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
where it was a featured production of the “Fringe” series.
At the Gettysburg Festival in 2011, MacPhail led pre-performance
discussions before the main-stage productions, and he organized
and hosted “Papers, Presentations and Patter: A Savoyards’ Symposium,” which
featured 14 speakers on a variety of Gilbert & Sullivan-related
topics. Since the Symposium, he has been editing the proceedings
which will be available for purchase in 2012 (www.Lulu.com).
In addition to directing and scholarship, MacPhail continues to build an extensive
collection of memorabilia connected with Gilbert & Sullivan. Several years
ago he exhibited items from his collection and gave two presentations at the
Gilbert & Sullivan Collectors' Symposium and Showcase at the State University
of New York, Purchase. He enjoys exhibiting portions of his collection to enhance
his theatrical productions.
In September of 2010, the Connecticut Gilbert & Sullivan
Society awarded MacPhail their Lifetime Achievement Award "in
Recognition of Decades of Outstanding Service in Behalf of
the Art Form of The Savoy in the State of Connecticut and
the Entire World of The Savoy." And in March of 2011,
the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin named him to
the Society’s Hall of Fame.
Ralph MacPhail, Jr., lives in Bridgewater with Alice, his college sweetheart
and wife of 43 years, in the Victorian house that once belonged to his mother's
family. Their son, Alexander, who graduated from Bridgewater College in 1997,
is an Episcopal priest; he and his wife, the Reverend Karin MacPhail, are parents
of Peter Alexander and Margaret (“but call me Maggie”) Alice. Alexander
is a third-generation Savoyard, who studies and sings Gilbert & Sullivan
as if to the manner born, for indeed he was! He also shares another hobby with
his father: he enjoys performing as a magician. He leaves, however, the collecting
of Howdy Doody memorabilia to his dad.
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| January
2012 |
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