Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” that enduring, extremely British operetta full of fast rhymes and delightful wordplay, is given more than adequate treatment by the Utah Lyric Opera Society at Springville’s Villa Playhouse Theatre.
One of the few shows to survive more than a century with losing its charm, “Pirates” is the story of a fellow named Frederic (Gregory Oaks) who has grown up on a ship full of the most genteel, orphan-respecting pirates you could hope for. Upon his 21st birthday, his apprenticeship is done and he heads ashore. He takes his nanny, Ruth (Nannette Wiggins; double-cast with Linda Jacobs), along with him, but is angry when he discovers that, contrary to what she had told him, she’s not very pretty (he’s never seen another woman, you see):
FREDERIC: You told me you were fair as gold!
RUTH: And, master, am I not so?
FREDERIC: And now I see you’re plain and old.
RUTH: I’m sure I’m not a jot so.
FREDERIC: Upon my innocence you play.
RUTH: I’m not the one to plot so.
FREDERIC: Your face is lined, your hair is grey.
RUTH: It gradually got so.
So instead he falls for Mabel (Margo Watson; double-cast with Lisa Mortenson), one of a dozen or so daughters of Major-General Stanley (Benny B. Ashby; double-cast with Howard Ruff). Simultaneously, the pirates fall for the rest of Stanley’s daughters. To prevent them from stealing his girls, Stanley tells the pirates he’s an orphan, which plays upon their sympathies. But when they learn of his lie, hoo, boy, that’s when things start gettin’ zany!
Fantastic singing voices are the rule in this production, with nearly every principal character exceeding all expectations. A few stand out as especially fantastic, though, including Michelle Caswell as one of Stanley’s daughters, Edith, and Gregory Oaks as Frederic.
William S. Gilbert’s lyrics are ingeniously crafted, full of magnificent, inventive rhymes and sparkling wit, as in the exchange previously quoted. The problem, however, is that when the tempo gets fast, the cast begins to trip over the lyrics, hurrying toward the clever rhymes and not enunciating the words in between. This is particularly true in “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” whose very premise is that the puffed-up fellow can sing fast and rhyme well (“lot o’ news” and “hypotenuse,” for example) — but in this production, half the time you can’t understand him. The police sergeant’s song suffers similarly from poor diction.
Aside from that, and some lame running gags (I have never seen so many characters’ toes stomped on accidentally for the sake of humor), and a superfluous unscripted cameo by the show’s producer Ewan Harbrecht Mitton as Queen Victoria — aside from all that, the show is a surprisingly jolly, highly enjoyable treat.