Ballard resident finds a challenge performing with Gilbert & Sullivan

This story has been corrected. We previously wrote that Cox & Box was a Gilbert & Sullivan piece, which it is not. We apologize for the error and appreciate those who pointed out our mistake. Thank you.

Ballard resident Richard S. Hodsdon has performed with the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society, which recently celebrated the grand opening of its new rehearsal space in the Crown Hill Center, since 1974. He said he loves their music and lyrics.

Hodsdon stars as Mr. Box in the comedy opera "Cox & Box" about a greedy landlord who rents a room to two different men who work two different shifts without their knowing about it until, of course, they find out.

"It offers a surmountable challenge in terms of music and theatricality," said Hodsdon, who is retired from his work with sea food companies, including Trident Seafoods in Ballard.

He recently earned a Masters of Arts in teaching at Seattle Pacific University.

"There is a lot of vocabulary-based humor in 'Cox & Box' with its plays on words," Hodson said. "There's a lot of orotund polysyllabic Victorian pomposity. Today's audience could compare the word-play (and that of Gilbert & Sullivan works) best to Monty Python, and Tom Lehrer is one of my idles."

Lehrer is the Harvard professor and performer of protest songs who penned "The Elements," setting the names of the chemical elements to the Gilbert & Sullivan "Major-General's Song" from "Pirates of Penzance."

"Cox & Box," as well as the classic "HMS Pinafore," will be performed by the Gilbert & Sullivan Society this July at the Bagley Wright Theatre at Seattle Center.

For ticket and performance information, click here.