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2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Actress Samantha Williams Harnesses the Headstrong Heroine In Tony-nominated ‘Pirates! The Penzance Musical'
'I'm just happy that our work is being recognized. [It's] super crazy,' says actress Samantha Williams on a Zoom call, just hours after finding out 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' has been nominated for the Tony Award for best revival of a musical. Perhaps nearly as thrilling as the Tony nom, Williams is also fresh off a performance for a group of young students, which she says felt like headlining at Madison Square Garden. For Williams, the journey with this New Orleans-set, jazz-inspired adaptation of the comic opera 'The Pirates of Penzance,' has been this exhilarating since Day One. Williams stars as Mabel, the headstrong heroine, alongside David Hyde Pierce (who plays her father), Jinkx Monsoon and Ramin Karimloo in 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' at the Todd Haimes Theatre through July 27. More from WWD EXCLUSIVE: Kiehl's Is Back in the Locker Room With Life Time Nicole Scherzinger Makes a Fashion Statement in LaQuan Smith and Thigh-high Boots at Broadway's Big Luncheon Honoring Idina Menzel Ana de Armas on 'Ballerina,' Breaking Barriers and Finding Balance in Hollywood 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' follows a young man, Frederic, accidentally forced into being a pirate until he turns 21. Gearing up for his birthday, he meets and falls in love with Williams' character Mabel. However, a slew of challenges arise, deterring their relationship — and hilarity ensues. While many theater fanatics are familiar with the original Gilbert & Sullivan work, this adaptation has been surprising attendees since its opening night with this new setting and 'silly' approach, according to Williams. It also surprised Williams, who was originally reluctant to audition for the role when she was first approached about a one-night-only concert rendition in October 2022. According to Williams, it was a complete change of pace from the type of work she'd been doing. 'I was like, 'Girl, I don't really think that's my vibe,' because I was doing more serious contemporary theater,' she recalls. 'I was like, 'A lot of young people don't really know it.' I learned about it in theater school, but I passed on the original audition for the concert. Then the team, specifically Joseph Joubert, who rewrote all the music — he was my music director and the orchestrator on 'Caroline, or Change' — wrote to my agents like, 'She has to come in…it's not what she thinks it is. They've changed it all.'' Williams adds: 'The world of Gilbert and Sullivan, I'd never seen a Black girl. I was like, 'I don't really see where I would fit in that world,' and so it was more like the preconceived ideas of what that [world] is and what that looks like, that society has put on all of us, actors and theater makers alike, that I was giving into.' Upon digging into the updated score and production, Williams was hooked and did go on to star in the concert alongside many of her current cast members. The jazzy orchestration and new take on the character of Mabel in particular stood out to her. 'Mabel is very headstrong and in tune with her sexuality in this version. She knows what she wants, and she gets it,' Williams says. 'She's the one sister that's always up to her own thing, whereas the rest of the sisters work as a school of fish… It's been fun to dive into bringing this character back in a way that's not so much damsel in distress and has more ownership over what she wants.' Of the vocals, Williams says: 'It has the jazz, the soprano, a little belt. It is all over the place, so it's been really fun and a great challenge for me.' The show comes with some other challenges, most notably holding in laughter, particularly in scenes with costars Pierce and Karimloo, Williams says. 'We laugh a lot on stage… The audience loves when you break during a comedy. They eat it up,' Williams says, adding this was especially true of the student audience. In terms of who breaks the most with laughter, Williams immediately says: ' It's me, and [the cast] would all say me too.' While Monsoon, Pierce and Karimloo are constantly causing Williams to crack up on stage, she's grateful to be working with such a stacked cast. 'All three [are] so gracious and humble… We're only around each other. We don't really have lives, and so [I] kind of forget who they are until someone [is like] 'how is it working with these icons?'' she says. 'My mom is obsessed with David Hyde Pierce and 'Frasier.' She was fan-girling when she met him at opening. David is just so subtle with everything, which is what makes him so good, and Ramin [has] that voice, and Jinx is just such an icon.' Upon opening, 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' was already set for a limited engagement, something that Williams is used to as she completed a short run of 'Titanic' at New York City Center last summer alongside Karimloo. 'I love being able to be like, 'OK, we did that. Now, let's jump to the next thing.' There's always something to learn with that,' she says. 'At the same time, it is a little bit scary because you just don't know what the next thing is going to be, and you have to just trust that something will come that's meant to be.' As far as what is next, Williams jokes about writing a 'Cheetah Girls' musical with her friends, adding that she's always been a Galleria, the character played by Raven-Symoné. 'It would be for a very specific audience, though, like our age girlies, [but] we can we make a dent,' she jokes, adding that she's been listening to the song 'Cinderella' from the first movie. As thoughts of a potential 'Cheetah Girls' musical rattle around Williams' brain, she says a bit more seriously that she is a part of several hopefully Broadway-bound new musicals. She's also ready to do something on television. 'What's next?' she asks herself. 'Lots of fun!' Best of WWD Celebrating Lenny Kravitz, Rock Icon, Actor, Author, Designer and Style Star: Photos Cannes Film Festival 1970s: Flashbacks, Celebrities and Fashion Highlights from WWD's 'Eye' Pages [PHOTOS] A Look Back at Cannes Film Festival's Best Dressed Red Carpet Stars: Blake Lively, Angelina Jolie, Princess Diana and More Photos
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.
New York Post
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Pirates! The Penzance Musical' review: Hilarious high-seas hijinks with David Hyde Pierce
Theater review PIRATES! THE PENZANCE MUSICAL The title of 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' is a loony one. What, exactly, is a Penzance musical? Don't give this sugar-coated, smile-a-second Broadway show the hook so fast, though. The only grunted 'arrrgh's come from the stage. Advertisement The slaphappy, reworked revival of 'The Pirates of Penzance,' which opened Thursday night at the Todd Haimes Theatre, has nothing to do with the coast of England. It shifts the absurd action some 2,800 nautical miles west to New Orleans, Louisiana. Leaving 'Penzance' on the marquee, I suppose, serves to remind audiences they're not seeing 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — The Musical' or 'Captain Phillips Live!'. They're getting the same favorite old Gilbert and Sullivan songs, just with a French Quarter twist. The continental leap dusts off the 145-year-old operetta and gives it an energetic oomph of swing and ragtime music, and the stage is brightened up by hot-sauce pops of purple, yellow and fiery red. Advertisement Director Scott Ellis' boisterous romp is not groundbreaking in the way the Joseph Papp-produced 1980 revival was, but it has the same irreverent spirit — and perpetually ridiculous tale. 4 Nicholas Barasch, Ramin Karimloo and Jinkx Monsoon star in 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' on Broadway. Joan Marcus There's naive pirate apprentice Frederic (Nicholas Barasch), who turns 21 (or so he thinks), only to learn that his lifetime of slavish duty to the seafaring rogues was the result of an administrative error. Years earlier, weird Ruth (Jinkx Monsoon), the only woman he's ever met, accidentally mistook Fred's dad saying 'pilot' for 'pirate.' Whoops. Advertisement His cronies, and later enemies, are the ship full of clumsy adult 'orphans,' led by the swaggering Pirate King (Ramin Karimloo). Loud and easily fooled, they are far from the world's best swashbucklers. And the pinky-out Major General (David Hyde Pierce) and his young daughters — including Mabel (Samantha Williams) — have Fredric's eyes bulging out of his head, and wedding bells clanging in his ears. 4 David Hyde Pierce is especially hilarious as the Major General. Joan Marcus The plot, however, is beside the point, which is why this material can stand up to pretty much any staging so long as the performers can sing the hell out of it and sell a punchline. Advertisement All of them can. Especially wonderful is Hyde Pierce's doddering 'I am the very model of a modern' Major General. He's Niles Crane if he retired to the Villages in Florida. His signature tune, the show's most famous, is wisely untouched by the creative team. And it kills. Not so uppercrust — crusty maybe — is 'RuPaul's Drag Race' star Monsoon's lovesick Ruth. She chews the scenery in just the way you want her to. Monsoon's 'When Fredrick Was A Little Lad' performed on a spinning piano is Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory. 4 Bararach, who falls for Samatha Williams' Mabel, has evolved into a formidable romantic lead. Joan Marcus Barasch, who's so often played the quirky sidekick, has become a winning romantic lead. His Frederic is innocent and lovable, and importantly not an airhead. And Karimloo, while not the funniest King ever, looks the part swinging from a rope and booms the tunes like canon fire. And now, some quibbles quaint. I'm no purist, but there are a couple changes from Ellis and adapter Rupert Holmes that don't sail as well as others. Many lyrics have been updated, which is fine. Not so digestible is that they've crammed in a treasure chest of unnecessary backstory to Karimloo's otherwise rousing 'I Am The Pirate King!' that makes it overcomplicated and hard to follow. And the duo have also tacked on two songs from Gilbert and Sullivan's 'HMS Pinafore.' One of those, 'We Sail the Ocean Blue,' at the end of the first act is a brilliant addition that sends the audience into intermission on a high. Advertisement 4 'Pirates!' is full of humor and frivolity. Joan Marcus The other, the out-of-nowhere finale, misguidedly turns 'For He Is An Englishman' into the heavy-handed 'We're All From Someplace Else.' Searching for an important message in 'The Pirates of Penzance' is like trying to find the lost city of Atlantis. Never gonna happen. Just have a wedding and dance a dance. Advertisement But what's two minutes in a musical that's otherwise effervescent, gorgeously sung, hysterical and frivolous? These days on Broadway, that is, that is a glorious thing.
