War between the sexes in Gilbert & Sullivan satire "Princess Ida"

The story of "Princess Ida" sounds as much like a Marx Brothers movie as an unrealized Shakespeare comedy. A lovesick prince and his two skirt-chasing pals invade the sanctity of a women's college, dress in drag, get drunk and generally cause chaos where order had been militantly enforced and men were forbidden.

An agreeable and often very funny comic opera by Gilbert & Sullivan, "Princess Ida" is 2007's colorful offering from the 53-year-old Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society. The nonprofit, amateur organization takes over the Bagley Wright Theatre each July with one of the 14 Gilbert & Sullivan collaborations regularly performed around the world.

A lesser-known show that opened in London in 1884 and closed after seven months, "Princess Ida" was last produced by the Seattle group in 1990. W.S. Gilbert's blank-verse, three-act libretto, a war-between-the-sexes satire that takes jabs at male-bashing women separatists and oversimplified views of evolution, is considered dated in some quarters.

But the point of "Princess Ida," besides skewering puffed-up potentates and cloistered intellectuals, is the reconciliation of stupid men and flinty women. "How is ... posterity to be provided" if all women "abjure tyrannic man," asks King Hildebrand (William Darkow), confronting his son's betrothed, Ida (Amanda Brown), who teaches that "Man, sprung from ape, is ape at heart."

Ida's would-be husband, Prince Hilarion (Scott Rittenhouse), and the latter's chums, Florian (Michael Giles) and Cyril (John Brookes), break into Ida's Castle Adamant after the princess fails to show for a royal wedding. The trio don women's attire during a very funny drag scene suggesting men need to be liberated from strict gender delineation as much as women do. Meanwhile, Ida's rigid vision of an idealized world without the nuisance of men doesn't exactly, when push comes to shove, dampen her students' barely contained curiosity about men.

Arthur Sullivan's mirthful and frequently lovely score includes a Handel parody and a sequence of songs (known as the "string of pearls") in the second act that are indeed stirring. Director Christine Goff's production is adorned with gorgeous costumes and a set change in Act 2 so impressive it drew applause on opening night.

But it's the fine cast — working for love, not money — that keeps the long show engaging, milks laughs without overdoing it, and remains in strong voice. Crowd favorite David Ross (as Ida's father, King Gama) gets the most mileage from Gilbert & Sullivan's tripping songs, while Alyce Rogers (as Castle Adamant's anti-male enforcer) gets a lot of laughs with her character's tortured patterns of logic.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com.