Even if you don’t know any Gilbert and Sullivan, you’ll undoubtedly recognise some of the foot-tapping songs—somehow they are in our English DNA. Mike Leigh’s 2015 Pirates of Penzance production—revival director Sarah Tipple—returns for the silly panto season. And it is delightful. The pace could be a bit tighter, the choreography a bit more imaginative, some don’t like the minimalist set—I do. But, the orchestra, under Natalie Murray Beale’s baton, is full of oomph. I can’t keep my feet still.
I wonder if the concept is to shrink the large Coliseum stage, to look at it from the wrong end of a telescope. Or to give it a stand-and-deliver amateur production with limited resources feel. Leigh, a G&S aficionado—you may remember his 1999 Topsy-Turvy film—brings his tongue-in-cheek affection for their works to the production. Affection is the word. You’ll leave in good spirits. The audience seems full of good cheer.
The Pirates of Penzance, a comic operetta, which parodies opera buffa, has been given a ‘BBC Play School’ makeover—if you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember its windows, square, round or arched. It feels appropriate for all the absurdist, childlike silliness that ensues. If you like the Pythons, you’ll like this.
In Alison Chitty’s comic strip (or children’s playground) restricted colour palette design, it is through the round window, a porthole into the bonkers world of kind orphaned pirates (J M Barrie?—who don’t the pair pastiche…), bumbling Victorian policemen, a loquacious, mendacious major general with a surfeit of daughters, a young man indentured to the pirates by his “maid of all works” because she mixed up two similar words (pirates for pilots) and who can’t leave the pirates when he comes of age because he was born in a leap year, making him only five and a bit now.
Lots of delicious wordplay (‘orphan’ and ‘often’—the latter with an upper class accent sounds very like the former), a gentle mockery of Victorian society, even, daringly, of Queen Victoria (the circular designs make a perfect picture frame for her portrait), and, of course, a happy ending with the pirates married off to the shoal of daughters.
Turns out, the pirates are peers of the realm “who have gone wrong”… But best of all, the lovesick couple, young pirate Frederic, with his overdeveloped sense of duty, and Mabel, the one daughter who does not reject him, are made for each other, their voices blending as one.
Coloratura songbird Isabelle Peters is outstanding as Mabel, her seductive soprano ringing out crystal clear. Together with tenor William Morgan (Frederic), who works hard at the comedy, they make a fine pair of turtle doves, their duets beautiful.
I, on the other hand, fall in love with James Creswell’s portly Sergeant of Police, whose rich bass enriches his straight-faced delivery. Richard Suart’s Major-General’s breathtakingly complicated patter song (you need surtitles for this… and do keep up…), mezzo Gaynor Keeble’s confused Ruth, the Piratical Maid of all Work and old G&S hand baritone John Savournin’s Pirate King complete the picture.
I say picture, for I think Leigh brings some of his cinematic vision to Gilbert and Sullivan’s irreverently funny distillation of high society full of ‘paradoxes’ such as their romantic idea of sending off their young men to die for noble ideals. Satire and song, charming performances, young up-and-coming singers and the old brigade… just about covers the whole family.
Reviewer: Vera Liber