The Theatre: In Central City

Of all the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and His Maid is nearest in style to grand opera, gives able singers most to get their teeth into. Last week The Yeomen was the offering of the eighth annual play festival in the plushy, chandeliered, 61-year-old Opera House in Central City, Colo.

Probably never had a better singing cast performed it: the Metropolitan Opera’s Tenor Charles Kullmann and Soprano Hilda Burke in the leads, Contralto Anna Kaskas as the housekeeper, cadaverous Singer-Actor Richard Hale as broken hearted Jester Jack Point.

When Scene Designer Robert Edmond Jones began the Central City festival (with Lillian Gish in Camille), he frowned on sideshows, drinking shindigs in the Teller House bar. Present producer-director of the festival is Frank St. Leger, Chicago musician. Last week square dances, tintype studios, night-club entertainers flourished once more in Central City. With The Yeomen running up the best box office in recent years, likelihood was that the festival would henceforth stick to plushy musical shows.