Pirates of Penzance (D’Oyly Carte)
The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company – inheritors of a tradition of Gilbert and
Sullivan performance that stretches back to its namesake, the original
producer of the team’s shows who actually built the Savoy Theatre and the
adjoining hotel on the profits he made from them – seem to have gone
full-circle. Not only do they now have a permanent foothold again at the
Savoy, after two Olivier Award nominated productions at that address last
year (HMS Pinafore and The Mikado), but also in the scary
combination of deadly reverence and enforced jollity that they apply to the
works. It’s the kind of thing you’re forced to watch with a fixed grin on
your face.
It’s fashionable to sneer at G&S, and impossible not to at the ridiculous
attention to detail of some of their more avid devotees. But for wit,
tunefulness and sheer craft, these – the original British musical comedies –
haven’t been equalled in the succeeding century on this side of the
Atlantic.
Unlike the 1981 Broadway reclamation of Pirates, riotously re-staged last year at the Open Air Theatre, which set a new standard for modern-day approaches to G&S, the D’Oyly Carte production that has resurfaced at the Savoy now turns the clock back once again. It even pays historic homage to the
original production’s genesis in being premiered abroad. Though a single
makeshift performance had been given in Paignton in 1879 to establish the
show’s English copyright, the official premiere of the piece was in New York
a day later; and this production has likewise travelled here via Australia’s
Victoria State Opera, where it was premiered in 1993.
An Australian-based creative team are therefore at the helm, including
director Stuart Maunder and designer Roger Kirk. The latter was also
responsible for the current lavish London Palladium revival of The King
and I, and next to his ravishing work on that show, one can only imagine
he was constrained by budgetary limitations here. The rather threadbare set
– a painted sky, a distinctly unseaworthy pirate vessel and some foliage –
sets the tone, and overall lack of surprise.
In fact, the only surprising thing – and I wish I didn’t have to
notice it – is the single bit of non-traditional casting, with one of the
Major-General’s numerous maiden daughters being sung by a solitary black
performer, Michelle Lokey-Smid. I’m all for colour-blind, integrated
casting; but this kind of tokenist effort actually throws undue attention
and focus on her.
Otherwise, this is as reliable, and unexciting, as it gets. There’s only
one performance here I actually enjoyed – Patti Allison‘s robust and rotund
Ruth – and only one I hated, Royce Mills‘s Modern Major-General, who
struck me as an overmugging combination of Kenneth Williams and Donald
Sinden. In the rest, there’s little to engage, one way or the other.
