The Scarlet Pimpernel is an imaginative musical The Diablo Light Opera Company has taken a big step with its premiere production Wildhom and Knighton's The Scarlet Pimpernel, a highly imaginative musical. Congratulations on an outstanding production. The story evolves around a prissy aristocrat Percy Blakeney, and his heroic adventures in rescuing rich aristocrats from the guillotine during the French revolution.

Like a British tongue-in-cheek comedy, a rather effeminate Lord Percy is angry when some of his good friends on the other side of the channel lose their heads. He and a group of lords decide to form a secret band of cavaliers who set about causing havoc with the French revolutionaries and their barbaric murders of aristocracy.

Keith Barlow (who plays Percy) and David Miailovich (who plays Chauvelin, a villainous enemy) are superb.

Lane McKenna plays Marguerite, the woman who beguiles both men and ends up marrying Lord Percy. She, is both lovely and articulate and has an excellent voice. More than that, she looks like the character you would imagine her to be. Once a famous actress, she is a cunning woman who will do whatever she must do to save her brother, who has been captured and is about to be tried as a traitor.

Director Frank Coppola has gathered as fine a group of musicians and vocal artists as you will find anywhere in the Bay Area to bring the full glamour and silliness of this show to full fruition. The lyrics and music created by Nan Knighton and Frank Wildhom respectively are is both dynamic and clever and fun to listen to.

I cannot say enough about the exquisite costumes, the well designed sets, the weapons (which are authentic), and the sound design. Carole Davis has done a masterful job of managing the sound, which can literally make or break a show. You can hear every voice, every note, every vocal nuance. the sound deign is superb.

this exciting, fun-filled and at times very silly story will, I'm sure, be a big hit for DLOC. It plays through March 9 at the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.