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The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company is pleased to announce that it will present Utopia, Limited, for four weekends, from March 1st through March 24th of 2024.
This production will be directed by Maureen Kane Berg, with music direction by Dr. Randal Buikema.
In our newly revised production, Utopia, Limited takes place on the idyllic island of Utopia, somewhere across the sea. Utopia is now a society of people whose great-great-great-grandparents had arrived from England to settle the uninhabited island over a century ago. During the years before the story takes place, Utopia has developed into an independent nation, which has recently renewed its relations with Britain.
Princess Zara returns to Utopia, after having completed her studies at Cambridge University’s Girton College, with a plan to free her father from the machinations of the two judges of the Utopian Supreme Court, by remodeling Utopia’s government. While Princess Zara’s reforms appear to be successful, are they, perhaps, too successful?
Written near the turn of the nineteenth century, but with the sensibilities of the late twentieth century, Utopia, Limited is a remarkably progressive story, unique to all of Gilbert and Sullivan, in that the driving force of the story is a college educated woman, who sets out to reform her nation’s society and government out of love for her father.