Classic To Be Revived

W.S. Gilbert may be best known as half of Gilbert & Sullivan, the team responsible for the world's most popular body of musical-theater works, but he was England's most successful playwright before he ever teamed up with Arthur Sullivan. Long Island audiences will have a chance to see why when the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island presents a staged reading of Gilbert's hilarious farce "Tom Cobb: or, Fortune's Toy" in Garden City on Saturday, October 20.

A delightful farce that anticipates by 20 years the classic comedies of Oscar Wilde, Tom Cobb premiered in 1875. It's the story of a young man who fakes his own death to evade his creditors, but when he inherits a fortune he finds, to his surprise, that it's harder to come back to life than he had expected it to be. His best friend, his father-in-law-to-be and even his fiancée have reasons of their own for wanting Tom to stay dead. And when he adopts a new identity, he finds himself unintentionally at the center of a massive breach-of-promise case.

"It's a spectacularly funny play, not only in the workings of the plot but also in the witty dialogue," says Gayden Wren, author of "A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert & Sullivan (Oxford University Press, 2002) and director of the staged reading. "Even the smallest details are full of paradoxes, sly sarcasm and unexpected fun. I can't believe that Oscar Wilde wasn't a big fan of "Tom Cobb," because several of its elements turn up in very similar form in "The Importance of Being Earnest," written 20 years later."

Fans of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas will find plenty of foreshadowing of such future classics as "H.M.S. Pinafore," "The Pirates of Penzance" and "Patience." Cobb resurrects himself as a Major-General, for example, and finds himself engaged to marry into a family entirely devoted to aesthetic poetry.

There's a line that so specifically echoes one of the most famous songs in "Pinafore," Wren adds, "that everyone will think that we must have inserted it as an in-joke. But no, two years before "Pinafore" was even conceived of, here it is in "Tom Cobb." But I won't give it away by mentioning it here, because the surprise is half the fun."

"Tom Cobb" is the third in a series of staged readings of Gilbert plays that the Company has presented at the Ethical Humanist Society of Nassau County, following "The palace of Truth" in 2004 and "The Princess" in 2005. All have been directed by Wren, who describes the series as a chance for Gilbert & Sullivan fans to learn a new side to Gilbert's work and a chance for theater fans to find out what it was that made Gilbert the dominant playwright of his age even aside from his comic operas.

David Groeger of Rockville Centre stars as Tom Cobb, the handsome young doctor whose only fault is a tendency to trust the people around him a bit too much. Valerie Grehan of Centerreach plays his fiancée, Matilda O'Fipp, with Robert Charles Rhodes of Queens Village as her father, Colonel O'Fipp, an Irish con artist who, Wren says, "is happy to tell everyone he's a colonel but absolutely refuses to say what he's a colonel of."

Will Curtis of Manhattan and San Francisco plays the aesthetically inclined Mr. Effingham, with Cassandra Lems of New Hyde Park as his equally aesthetic wife. Lauren Phillips of Great Neck plays their extravagantly lovelorn daughter Caroline, who won't let the fact that she's never seen Major-General Fitzpatrick stand in the way of her adoring him.

Lily Grehan of Centereach plays the housekeeper biddy, with Wren himself in what he describes as "the incredibly pivotal role of 'A Footman.'"

"This isn't just the funniest play that Gilbert ever wrote," Wren says, though it may well be. It's funnier than anything playing on Broadway at the moment, and anyone who likes a good laugh will love it, even if they've never heard of Gilbert, Sullivan or Queen Victoria herself."

"Tom Cobb: or, Fortune's Toy" will be presented on Saturday, October 20, at 8 p.m. at the Ethical Humanist Society of Nassau County, 38 Old Country Road in Garden City. Admission is $15; for tickets, directions or other information, call (516) 216-1173 or (631) 567-8264.