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Time Out
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Pirates! The Penzance Musical
Broadway review by Adam Feldman This show is of a kind that I shall dub an operettical: A British-Broadway hybrid that is cleverly synthetical. It starts with operetta of the comical variety That Sullivan and Gilbert wrote to tickle high society. The Pirates of Penzance, a pageant witty and Victorian, Premiered in 1880 on our calendar Gregorian. It still is entertaining but perhaps not in a date-night way; It seems a bit too fusty for revival on the Great White Way. So Rupert Holmes has come along to pump some Broadway jazz in it: To add a little spice and put some Dixieland pizzazz in it. And thanks to these injections, neither rev'rent nor heretical, We now have Holmes's model for a modern operettical. Pirates! The Penzance Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus Best known for Drood (and also for his hit 'Piña Colada Song'), He hasn't wrecked the story or egregiously forgot a song. But to ensure the whole endeavor's jazzier and bluer leans, He takes the show from Cornwall and resets it down in New Orleans. The Crescent City's sass and brass have quite rejuvenated it As Joe Joubert and Daryl Waters have reorchestrated it. (They've also added melodies that never here have been afore, On loan from Iolanthe, The Mikado and from Pinafore.) With silliness and energy the show is chockablock, well-set Amid the brightly colored NOLA streets of David Rockwell's set. And now that we have looked at questions musico-aesthetical, We move on to the plot of this diverting operettical. Pirates! The Penzance Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus The Pirate King swashbuckles on a large if not momentous ship Where Frederic, turning 21, is ending his apprenticeship. And when this duty-driven laddie reaches his majority His conscience will demand that he accept the law's authority. Upon that time, young Frederic knows, though he may feel a loss acute, His former pals, the pirates, he will have to fight and prosecute. (Unless, that is, some hitherto-undreamed-of technicality Should come to light and complicate his noble plan's legality.) But what if Frederic's former nurse, the sorely misbegotten Ruth, Discovers in some document an old and long-forgotten truth? It might, if this scenario's not strictly theoretical, Entail a major conflict in this model operettical. Pirates! The Penzance Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus Scott Ellis's direction is all tongue-in-cheek dramatical And Warren Carlyle's dances are enjoyably emphatical But notwithstanding those behind-the-scenesters' benefactions here, It's fair to say the actors are the principal attractions here. The Pirate King's embodied by a glist'ning Ramin Karimloo (Inspiring more dropped panties than you'd find in any harem loo) And you could comb through New Orleans and all surrounding parishes, And never find a Frederic as pluperfect as Nick Barasch's. The Drag Race legend Jinkx Monsoon, all blowsy eccentricity, Brings Ruth to life with vocal chops and facial elasticity. Performances italicized (and not just parenthetical) Combine to lift the spirits of this lively operettical. Pirates! The Penzance Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus Samantha Williams makes a lusty Mabel; Preston Truman Boyd Delivers his tap-dancing like an ably-programmed humanoid. But David Hyde Pierce steals the show, I say with no cajolery. His Major-Gen'ral is a master class in brilliant drollery: A rapid-patter songster with aplomb matched by no other's style (And daughters pirates yearn for, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers –style). In glorious precision, Pierce elicits every gazer's smiles As lovably and nimbly as he did when he played Frasier 's Niles. Pirates! The Penzance Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus The modern world is full of stress, so go and have a party, brah, And shake it like a necklace made of gaudy beads at Mardi Gras. Enjoy this Broadway hybrid that is tuneful and poetical: A most delightful model of a modern operettical. Pirates! The Penzance Musical. Todd Haimes Theatre (Broadway). Music by Arthur Sullivan. Libretto by W.S. Gilbert. Adapted by Rupert Holmes. Directed by Scott Ellis. With David Hyde Pierce, Ramin Karimloo, Nicholas Barasch, Jinkx Monsoon, Samantha Williams, Preston Truman Boyd. Running time: 2hrs 30mins. One intermission. Post scriptum: These rhymes of mine, I grant you, may not all be perfect, but they were The best that I could do—and face it, standards are not what they were. I'm just a humble swimmer in this lyrical aquarium; If W.S. Gilbert's what you want, then go unbury him.
Chicago Tribune
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Pirates! The Penzance Musical' is a delightful bit of Gilbert and Sullivan, back on Broadway
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.
