from the City Box Office event page for the Lamplighters Gala
A year ago this month, the Lamplighters Music Theatre (LMT) live-streamed its annual gala with a production which may have earned the longest-title award: Pride and Pre-Existing Conditions, or Holy Forking Murgatroyd, It’s the 2020 Gala! This year the Gala will return to Herbst Theatre; but the performance, which will be the latest effort to play fast and loose with the music of Arthur Sullivan, will be simulcast on YouTube. Once again there will be a new production with another extended title: Throw Gama from the Train! or, Murder on the Utopia Limited!
My guess is that those familiar with the full canon of operettas composed by Arthur Sullivan setting words by W. S. Gilbert will recognize the name of one of the lesser known characters and that of the even-more-lesser-known operetta; but, given that the first part of the title has a referent that is over half a century old, it probably deserves some explanation. It comes from a song that was published in 1956 with a refrain whose first line was “Throw Mama from the train a kiss, a kiss.” This inspired a 1987 movie with Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal entitled Throw Mama From the Train, which amounted to a parody of Strangers on a Train, a film made by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. However, through Mad magazine I discovered another take on the text steeped in Yiddishkeit: “Throw Mama from the train a knish, a knish ... don't leave her hungry behind.”
None of this has anything to do with the Lamplighters production. The plot-line for this production has been summarized on the Annual Gala Web page as follows:
An award-winning G & S troupe is traveling by train to a command performance in the country of Trebechnya, whose choice of royal successor determined the fate of a multi-country coalition. A little bit Jeopardy!, a little bit Strangers on a Train, a little bit Mission Impossible, a little bit Murder on the Orient Express, all set to (mostly) Sullivan’s music!
Due to current pandemic conditions, fund raising will take place through a silent auction. There will be a masked meet-and-greet after the show; but those attending will have to take their champagne home!
The performance will begin at 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 17, taking place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building. City Box Office has created an event page for online purchase with ticket prices between $75 and $100. The silent auction will take place beginning at 2 p.m.; and the meet-and-greet will take place following the performance. The Veterans Building is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. LMT has not yet set up a hyperlink for live-streaming. Most likely it will be added to the LMT Steaming Web page closer to the date of the Gala.
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