Transcript
Matt Timminini (0:01)
Welcome to a review recap episode from Broadway Radio. My name is Matt Timminini. On today's episode, we are diving into all of the reviews for Pirates the Penzance musical, which opened on Broadway on Thursday night at the Todd Haymes Theater. This is of course a kind of reimagined revival of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta the Pirates of Penzance. Now if you are hearing this in Patreon, this is a standalone episode, but if you are listening in the regular feed, welcome to Today on Broadway for Friday, April 25th. As I said, pirates, exclamation point, the Penzance musical officially opened at the Todd Haymes Theater from the Roundabout Theater Company on Thursday night. It is currently scheduled to play through July 27th. Of course, this is a subscription house, so they have other things scheduled in their season for the Todd Haymes, but also they have a renovation that is planned that'll take about eight months before anything else actually happens in the theater. So while there could be a little bit of time to extend, this show can't be very much because they do have construction scheduled. Of course, as I said, this is a Gilbert and Sullivan show, so the Libretto is by W.S. gilbert, music by Arthur Sullivan, but the adaptation for the book is by the Tony Award winner pop star and Broadway radio guest Rupert Holmes. It is directed by Scott Ellison, choreographed by Warren Carlisle. Roundabout has assembled a superlative cast led by Romain Karemloo as the pirate King, Jinx Monsoon as Ruth, David Hyde Pierce as Major General Stanley, Nicholas Barish as Frederick Prince Preston, Truman Boyd as the Sergeant of Police, Samantha Williams as Mabel Stanley and many other incredibly talented folks. This version of the show is transported from Great Britain to New Orleans and is given a jazzy, bluesy re imagination. According to press notes, it is a quote, outrageously clever romp sizzling with Caribbean rhythms and French Quarter flair, with a tongue twisting Major General, the rabble rousing pirate King, newly imagined young lovers, daring daughters, footloose pirates and fleet footed police. There's a shipload. I like that turn or phrase of music. Musical comedy delights on board to dazzle first timers and GNS aficionados alike. As of recording time, Did They like it? Has collected 14 reviews, 11 are positive, two were mixed and one was negative. Unfortunately for Roundabout and the production, one of the mixed reviews did come from Jesse Green of the New York Times, who said, though jolly enough, the latest Broadway incarnation, which opened on Thursday at the Todd Haimes Theater, trusts neither the material nor us as much as it might clumsily but accurately retitled the Penzance Musical and transported to post reconstruction New Orleans. It is also significantly altered in tone. Except for the central performance by David Hyde Pierce marvelously underplaying the tongue twisting Major General, the production has a sweaty quality bordering on frenzy that's hopelessly at odds with the cool wit of the original. I wish Ellis Direction had taken more direction from Pierce's pickled deadpan with his absurd facial hair and rum blossom nose, he needs little else to get his laughs. Really, the less he does, the funnier it is because his stillness helps us focus on the words, which are otherwise too often difficult to discern in this production. For once that can't be blamed on the sound design, which Mikail Solomon has mercifully kept at moderate volume. The problem is that the musical theater style of the adaptation is not ideally suited to the density of Gilbert's verse. Despite such mismatches between the original and the remake, Pirates is still a feather in the tricorn of the Roundabout Theatre Company which produced and nurtured it. Operettas don't last 146 years just because they're good. I love Gilbert and Sullivan's Rudiger too, but have never seen it except at camp. Longevity like that requires faith not only in the past but also in the future. So if Pirates finds a forever home, or even just a temporary one in New Orleans celebrating the land of clean slate, the blank canvas, the new beginning, as the Major General declares in his proration, so be it. If, even though savvy Savoyards might approve, a more positive review comes from Adam Feldman of Time Out New York, who gave the show four to five stars and, as is kind of his want, wrote his review in verse. Let me hopefully do this properly, he said. The modern world is full of stress, so go and have a party bra and shake it like a necklace made of gaudy beads at Mardi Gras and enjoy this Broadway hybrid that is tuneful and poetical, a most delightful model of a modern operaticle. Bravo. Ad on. I'm not going to read the rest of that, though.