NEW YORK — W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” is a foundational musical. First seen in New York in 1879, this wacky yarn of swashbuckling pirates, Monty Pythonesque coppers and the comely daughters of a naval major general taught a young Broadway how to structure a musical comedy. Sitting at the Todd Haimes Theatre and listening to a character named Mabel warble a ditty called “Ah, Leave Me Not to Pine Alone,” I was suddenly struck by how similar the song was to “Alone At A Drive-In Movie” from “Grease.”
Sensibilities have changed, of course, since 1879. And since Gilbert and Sullivan helpfully reside in the public domain, they can be adapted with impunity. In this latest case, now a relatively rare outing for the pair on Broadway with the Roundabout Theatre Company, they’ve been given an overhaul by adapter Rupert Holmes and a new sexed-up title, being as producers these days panic whenever a title lacks a “banger,” as we say in journalism.
Ergo, the doings of the Cornish buccaneers now goes by “Pirates! The Penzance Musical,” as if Gilbert and Sullivan had given a damn about that particular town, beyond its alliterative properties.
At least they’d have appreciated the commercial practicalities. As they would Holmes’ decision to juice up the “Pirates” score with songs actually written for “Iolanthe,” “The Mikado,” and “H.M.S. Pinafore.” Why not? That’s been done with Cole Porter and George Gershwin and we won’t be seeing “The Mikado” anytime soon.
Naturally, “Pirates” has a star in David Hyde Pierce. The good news is that said celebrity is fully equal to the formidable performative demands of one of the greatest patter songs of all time, “I Am the Very Model of the Modern Major-General,” which he performed flawlessly, and ever more rapidly, on the night I was there. Hyde Piece is perfect for Gilbert and Sullivan: he’s droll, a tad dotty, curiously understated and generous with fellow actors, and there is a perpetual twinkle in his been-there-done-that eyes. Add a handle-bar mustache, and what more do you need?
Ramin Karimloo, the dubious pirate monarch, certainly adds to the party. Half Kevin Kline and half Hugh Jackman, the bare-chested Karimloo swaggers around as the fun demands alongside Frederic
(Nicholas Barasch), the duty-bound young fellow apprenticed to the pirates and whose complications and affection for Mabel (Samantha Williams) inform most of the plot. Barasch looks and acts like the long-lost child of Conan O’Brien; he’s funny too, in the straight-man kind of way that Gilbert and Sullivan demands.
Frederic has to fight off the machinations of his guardian Ruth, who is spiced up a tad by Jinkx Monsoon, a shrewd bit of casting that I suspect was intended to make that whole relationship more fun and, well, a little less creepy.
The director, Scott Ellis, is clever with those kinds of choices (Preston Truman Boyd is well cast as the police sergeant) and Ellis is joined here by choreographer Warren Carlyle, who keeps all of these wacky characters on their toes, including the show’s famous Chaplinesque constables, here rendered as the New Orleans Volunteer Police, since the whole show now takes place in New Orleans in 1880 with a Creole kinda vibe and new syncopations added to the score.
My one caveat on what is a highly entertaining and most genial evening of daffy, escapist Broadway, is that some of it feels a bit much, especially movement and new orchestrations-wise. Gilbert’s internal rhymes were never equalled until Stephen Sondheim came along with comparable talent and there are times when the puns and quips get a tad overwhelmed by the Monty Python walks, the jazzy stylings and what not. Occasionally, the material needed to be better trusted.
But those are minor caveats. Holmes, best known for writing “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” gives the show a fresh and loving applied coat of paint, even writing Gilbert and Sullivan themselves into the experience, taking a leaf from Jamie Lloyd’s little homage to Andrew Lloyd Webber in the current “Sunset Blvd.” But Ellis also has delivered an old-school analog pleasure in a Broadway season much seduced by digital temptation.
In their graves, Gilbert and Sullivan must be turning topsy-turvy with delight.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
At the Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St., New York; www.roundabouttheatre.org
