Michael Portantier (31:01)
Well, this is an adaptation by Rupert Holmes, whose work for Edwin Drood I very much admire. But to me, this is far less successful. As James mentioned, the. The concept here is that the action is moved to New Orleans, which I think is the root of the problem here. I mean, maybe that sounded like an interesting thing to do. It gave them license to provide very new arrangements and orchestrations of the songs. And I. I guess they were going for a party atmosphere, which I think is, you know, appropriate to this musical, this Gilbert and Sullivan musical. But to me, it was just an absolute mess from a stylistic standpoint, not to mention a narrative standpoint, because nothing makes sense. I mean, there's no stylistic cohesion to the score whatsoever. First of all, they dragged in songs from other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, including the opening number. The pirates do sing, sort of sing Pour Au Poor, the Pirate Sherry, but it's almost in counterpoint and very much secondary to the main opening number, which is a song called Good. More Good Morning, Good Morning, which is based on a song called Good Morrow from Iolanthe and which is a solo for Frederick. So he comes out and he sings this song, which is primarily a solo, and then the pirates are singing back of him. And right from the start I thought, well, wow, how much different is this going to be? Then there was a lot that was from the original show, but also some major cuts. That whole scene, that whole musical scene. Oh, false one, you have deceived me. Where Ruth. Where. Yeah, where Frederick rails against Ruth because she has kept from him that she is maybe not the most beautiful woman in the world. All of that is gone, and lots of other changes as well. And the stylistic inconsistency of the music extends to the fact that some of the songs, for example, the Pirate King song and the Major General's song. I am the very model of a modern Major General sound, very much like they always have in terms of tempo and arrangement, because you really can't change those without distorting them terribly. But then other songs are completely revamped to give them a. A New Orleans sound. And I. I didn't know from one song to the next what I was going to be hearing in terms of musical style. And to me, that. That was a. A huge, huge negative. What else have you so many notes here? The. Oh, yes. So moving it from, theoretically from England to New Orleans also made absolute hash of one of the jokes in the show, which is the misunderstanding of the word orphan O R P H A N for the word often O F T Because if you say those words with a British accent, they both do sound very similar as something like often, but not. Not if you were to do it with an American or a New Orleans accent. Now, Ramin Karimlou, who plays the pirate king here, has neither a New Orleans nor a British accent. He has his own very odd, hard to pin down accent, which is a combination of several. But I thought that that whole sequence that he did with David Hyde Pierce basically went for nothing here because it didn't make any sense whatsoever and maybe too much time is spent on that anyway, even in the original. Although when George Rose did it with Kevin Klein, I think it certainly, certainly was a highlight of that production. So I guess it depends. David Hyde Pierce is fabulous in this show, giving a performance as the Major General which certainly would be very, very well at home in a traditional production, but also is a highlight of this one. I thought Ramin. I enjoyed him much better than in anything I have seen him before. I think his comic chops have developed and he sounded very good and I was happy that I liked him much more than expected. Jinx Monsoon as Ruth to me seemed very miscast and also they tried to beef up her role in a way that I thought was not effective, including the addition in Act 2 of a song from the Mikado called Alone and Yet Alive, which I thought just stopped the actual and cold and really was not a showcase for Jinx vocally or acting wise. So I'm not sure why they put that in. I guess just to. To pad the role and make it more of a. Of a lead. Nicholas Barish I very much enjoyed as Frederick and he again, his performance would translate very well to a traditional production. I think he's grown into his voice and his looks and I thought he was. Was utterly delightful. Samantha Williams as Ruth, unfortunately to me, and I'm not sure why she. She barely registered at all. It's not the most dynamic role in, in the show or in the canon. And. And I think Linda Ronstadt managed to make a big impression in it because people were so overwhelmed and astounded by the fact that she had that soprano register that she had never used in her pop recording. So that itself was. Was a point of great interest. But since that's not the case here, I think the, the role just kind of came across as kind of a cipher and not very interesting. Directed by Scott Ellis, which I. The direction itself was fine, but. But I again I didn't like the whole concept of the adaptation. I did very much Joy Warren Carlile's choreography. I thought he did a wonderful job in the music direction of Joseph Joubert. And the design is very, very fun, as one might hope. Designed by David Rockwell and costumes by Linda Cho. Lighting, Donald Holder. So I had a. An inconsistently good time in places where they didn't adapt the show too much. And, oh, and as I alluded to before, be prepared that a lot of the lyrics, a lot. A lot of the lyrics have been rewritten by Rupert Holmes, which I would say takes a lot of nerve considering that we're talking about Gilbert and Sullivan, but our listeners can decide how they respond to the new lyrics.
