HMS Pinafore

Synopsis

HMS Pinafore premiered in 1878 at the Opera Comique in London, and became Gilbert and Sullivan's first smash hit, enjoying a successful run of 571 performances. Satirising the snobbery and hypocrisy of the English social system of its day. HMS Pinafore is a comic tale of love, class pretensions and mistaken identities. Questioning the integrity of the ruling elite and exposing the duplicitous motives of leaders of power, this comedy still has remarkable resonance today.

Our Review:

17 December 2002

Martin Duncan's ultimately sparkling revival of D'Oyly Carte's 1994 production starts rather flatly. The male ensemble seem distinctly ill at ease with Lindsay Dolan's cutely camp choreography and Alison Rae Jones' Josephine sounds disturbingly strangulated. However, the company soon settles down, particularly so with Sam Kelly's entrance as Sir Joseph Porter, 'Ruler of the Queen's Navee'. Kelly manages to capture exactly the style and mood of the production.

And what a debt is due to Joe Papp's revamp of The Pirates of Penzance two decades ago. The jokes are there, the ensemble move around the stage, and there's more than one knowing wink to the audience. In other words, nobody treats this HMS Pinafore over seriously, thus preserving and reinforcing the jokes. How different from the way G &S was presented for much of the last century.

W S Gilbert's gentle-but-sharp dig at Victorian class attitudes and the superficiality ...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

No reviews yet

Click here to add your review