A crowd of Gilbert & Sullivan devotees gathered in New Hyde Park this evening for a rare performance of Gayden Wren's "Gilbert & Sullivan and Me" as a benefit for the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island.
The program, a one-man show with special guest Sara Holliday and pianist Thomas Z. Shepard, is drawn from Wren's 43 years as a member of the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island, and features a variety of songs related to but not exactly from the Savoy operas. Among the contents: song parodies, tunes by Arthur Sullivan with other lyricists and one of only three Gilbert & Sullivan songs not written for performance in an opera.
Wren is best known to Gilbert & Sullivan fans as the author of "A Most Ingenious Paradox: The Art of Gilbert & Sullivan" (Oxford University Press, 2001) and the upcoming "Only in Theatrical Performances: Reading 'The Mikado.'" The show had previously been seen in Rochester, N.Y., and in Austin, Texas; this was its New York debut.
