Pirates at Boston's Huntington Theatre

I have a very soft spot in my heart for The Pirates of Penzance, the comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. I was deeply enamored of the 1983 movie version, which was a filmed version of the 1981 Broadway revival. And one of my favorite stage roles ever was the Pirate King, which I played at a certain community theater on the south shore of Boston. (The particular...ahem...company will remain nameless, but I will say that the one stage direction I received from the "directors" was to watch the video.)

So I was intrigued when I heard that Boston's Huntington Theatre Company would be presenting the Gordon Greenberg (director and co-conceiver) and Nell Benjamin (co-conceiver) version of The Pirates of Penzance, entitled Pirates! (Or, Gilbert and Sullivan Plunder'd). The show had an apparently successful run at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse in 2007, prompting the Huntington to add the production to its current season. I was especially interested in seeing the show when I heard that Broadway performers Steve Kazee (110 in the Shade, To Be or Not to Be) and Cady Huffman (Tony winner for The Producers) would be featured in the show, as the Pirate King and Ruth, respectively.

Benjamin and Greenberg have reworked the show considerably, moving the setting to the Caribbean (get it?), cutting down a decent portion of the score, throwing in some 7/8 time signatures, and rewriting a good 80% of the book. They've attempted to make the show bawdier (note decolletage in poster above), looser, and more freewheeling. But when you tamper with a classic, you'd better have a really good reason, not to mention the chops to fulfill your artistic vision for the piece. Benjamin and Greenberg would seem to have neither, at least based on the show in its current form.

Despite some engaging performances -- including those of Anderson Davis as Frederic, Farah Alvin as Mabel, and Ed Dixon as the Major General -- Pirates is a lackluster affair. The show features a good deal of imaginative and energetic staging from choreographer Denis Jones, but very little that's actually amusing. Greenberg and Benjamin have merely produced a serviceable substitution for the Gilbert and Sullivan original, not an improvement. My overall impression while watching this admittedly professional, if uninspired, production was "Why?"

As for the Broadway ringers, it's beginning to look as though Steve Kazee's charisma-deprived performance as Starbuck opposite Audra MacDonald in the recent Broadway revival of 110 in the Shade wasn't a fluke. And Cady Huffman is surprisingly...you should pardon the expression...flat, despite her numerous talents and charms.

And yet, Pirates is reasonably entertaining, and certainly not a disaster or a waste of time on anyone's part. But, as my friend Ken said to me as we exited the theater, "Tomorrow, I'll probably forget I even saw this show." My feelings exactly.

Comments

[AjohnP]

How funny! I once saw a community theatre production of 'The Pirates of Penzance' a few (many?) years ago and had a total crush on the Pirate King. :-)

[chris caggiano]

Oh, Peaches. And now look at you. Sadie, Sadie, married lady.

[Justin]

Excuse me if I sound rude here, but I look really hard at that stage and found almost nothing worth writing home about. It was one of the most painful evenings of theatre I have ever experienced. I felt like the 'director' told the cast right before the curtain came up "Forget the story, just MAKE EM LAUGH" I don't think I have ever seen a group of actors try as hard to get a laugh. Sad really.

[Zilpha]

I agree with you Justin (above) entirely. It was a night of constant pandering to the audience (who loved it . . . sad). Each "joke" was repeated several times, in case it was missed, and then milked BEYOND that. Personally, I don't find repetitive vomiting entertaining (or clumsy pelvic gyrations, for that matter). Little glimmers of quality would appear ("Hail Poetry"), but that was because it was performed the ORIGINAL WAY it was intended, not with a Calypso beat, or some other bastardization. I'm not a purist, and do like to see modernizations, but they often don't work. This was one that didn't. I thought it was grotesque and left at intermission.