Theater evaluation
PIRATES! THE PENZANCE MUSICAL
The title of “Pirates! The Penzance Musical” is a loony one. What, precisely, is a Penzance musical?
Don’t give this sugar-coated, smile-a-second Broadway present the hook so quick, although. The one grunted “arrrgh”s come from the stage.
The slaphappy, reworked revival of “The Pirates of Penzance,” which opened Thursday evening on the Todd Haimes Theatre, has nothing to do with the coast of England. It shifts the absurd motion some 2,800 nautical miles west to New Orleans, Louisiana.
Leaving “Penzance” on the marquee, I suppose, serves to remind audiences they’re not seeing “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — The Musical” or “Captain Phillips Live!”. They’re getting the identical favourite outdated Gilbert and Sullivan songs, simply with a French Quarter twist.
The continental leap dusts off the 145-year-old operetta and provides it an lively oomph of swing and ragtime music, and the stage is brightened up by hot-sauce pops of purple, yellow and fiery pink.
Director Scott Ellis’ boisterous romp will not be groundbreaking in the way in which the Joseph Papp-produced 1980 revival was, however it has the identical irreverent spirit — and perpetually ridiculous story.
There’s naive pirate apprentice Frederic (Nicholas Barasch), who turns 21 (or so he thinks), solely to study that his lifetime of slavish obligation to the seafaring rogues was the results of an administrative error.
Years earlier, bizarre Ruth (Jinkx Monsoon), the one lady he’s ever met, unintentionally mistook Fred’s dad saying “pilot” for “pirate.” Whoops.
His cronies, and later enemies, are the ship filled with clumsy grownup “orphans,” led by the swaggering Pirate King (Ramin Karimloo). Loud and simply fooled, they’re removed from the world’s greatest swashbucklers.
And the pinky-out Main Basic (David Hyde Pierce) and his younger daughters — together with Mabel (Samantha Williams) — have Fredric’s eyes bulging out of his head, and marriage ceremony bells clanging in his ears.
The plot, nonetheless, is irrelevant, which is why this materials can stand as much as just about any staging as long as the performers can sing the hell out of it and promote a punchline.
All of them can. Particularly fantastic is Hyde Pierce’s doddering “I am the very model of a modern” Main Basic. He’s Niles Crane if he retired to the Villages in Florida. His signature tune, the present’s most well-known, is correctly untouched by the inventive crew. And it kills.
Not so uppercrust — crusty possibly — is “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Monsoon’s lovesick Ruth. She chews the surroundings in simply the way in which you need her to. Monsoon’s “When Fredrick Was A Little Lad” carried out on a spinning piano is Lucy and Ethel on the chocolate manufacturing unit.
Barasch, who’s so typically performed the quirky sidekick, has grow to be a successful romantic lead. His Frederic is harmless and lovable, and importantly not an airhead. And Karimloo, whereas not the funniest King ever, appears the half swinging from a rope and booms the tunes like canon hearth.
And now, some quibbles quaint.
I’m no purist, however there are a pair adjustments from Ellis and adapter Rupert Holmes that don’t sail in addition to others.
Many lyrics have been up to date, which is okay. Not so digestible is that they’ve crammed in a treasure chest of pointless backstory to Karimloo’s in any other case rousing “I Am The Pirate King!” that makes it overcomplicated and arduous to observe.
And the duo have additionally tacked on two songs from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “HMS Pinafore.” A type of, “We Sail the Ocean Blue,” on the finish of the primary act is an excellent addition that sends the viewers into intermission on a excessive.
The opposite, the out-of-nowhere finale, misguidedly turns “For He Is An Englishman” into the heavy-handed “We’re All From Someplace Else.”
Looking for an necessary message in “The Pirates of Penzance” is like looking for the misplaced metropolis of Atlantis. By no means gonna occur. Simply have a marriage and dance a dance.
However what’s two minutes in a musical that’s in any other case effervescent, gorgeously sung, hysterical and frivolous?
Today on Broadway, that’s, that may be a wonderful factor.
