Like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Key and Peele, or green eggs and ham, W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan are a comedic duo for the ages. There are a lot of brightly hued yolks and hamminess aplenty in Pirates!: The Penzance Musical, an updated version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 145-year-old operetta that opened Thursday at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre. Director Scott Ellis’s production, with an adaptation by Rupert Holmes, gets a framing device that brings the show’s creators to a theater in New Orleans’s French Quarter in 1880. Librettist Gilbert (David Hyde Pierce) and composer Sullivan (Preston Truman Boyd) introduce the show and agree to take on two key roles, the Major General and Sergeant of Police, respectively. Sullivan’s score gets a light reworking as well, with many tunes taking on elements of early-Dixieland in the tempo, phrasing, and orchestrations.
But purists need not fret — at least too much. The bulk of the songs, and the feather-light story about pirates arriving on shore to woo the daughters of the local big wig, remains very much intact. (This production also trims some of the original’s fat, both in dialogue and song, while pulling in some tunes from other Gilbert and Sullivan shows — a technique that Joseph Papp also deployed in his acclaimed 1980 production with Kevin Kline.)
Ramin Karimloo casts a striking figure as the puffed-up and pompous Pirate King — the role that made Kline a star — a swarthy fop who’s fallen on hard times because he’s earned a reputation for forfeiting his booty to anyone claiming to be an orphan like himself. As a result of his soft spot, his crew’s fortunes have sunk to the point where they’re looking to escape — with shore leave in the port of New Orleans offering an opportunity for female companionship and marriage.
And that’s how we meet the Major General, with his large brood of daughters at the ready for wooing and wedding. Pierce, sporting a gray-white handlebar mustache and muttonchops, is the very model of a comic supporting player with a pirate’s ability to swipe every scene he’s in. He Pierces his way through the role, from the nimble enunciation of his character’s patter songs (he’s handed a new one from Iolanthe in the second act) to his flustered line delivery to his perpetual bewilderment. There’s no need for a pirate’s map, marked X or otherwise, to locate the source of this show’s biggest treasure.
Jinkx Monsoon, a trans actress perhaps best known as an early winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, is an inspired choice to play Ruth, the nursemaid to an apprentice pirate, Frederic, whose imminent 21st birthday will free him from his obligations to the ship. And she delivers the goods, displaying natural gifts for physical and verbal comedy while delivering her songs in a tremulous but controlled contralto. (She deservedly gets an additional second-act solo of her own, “Alone, and Yet Alive,” drawn from The Mikado.)
Nicholas Barasch surprises as Frederic, the pirate apprentice whose experience of womanhood was limited to Ruth until he encounters the Major General’s diverse brood — in particular, the fair and spunky Mabel (Samantha Williams, who’s mostly relegated to the background in this production despite a fine soprano). With his square jaw, mop of ginger hair, and military-school posture, he fully embodies the over-earnestness of youth while bringing an athletic energy to Warren Carlyle’s spirited choreography. He also sings like a dream, with a clear, bright tenor, shining in a role that typically recedes to the straight-man shadows.
There’s a colorful cartoonishness to the whole endeavor, from David Rockwell’s storybook sets to Cho’s boldly patterned costumes to Donald Holder’s lighting, that underscores the ridiculousness of the story. After all, this is a show whose plot centers on a series of punny misunderstandings of words (pirate and pilot, orphan and often) from characters who seem blissfully unaware of their innate silliness. Happily, Ellis’s cast leans into the absurdities without going too meta. As broad as the performances go, and they go very broad indeed, it’s clear that none of the characters are in on the joke. And that makes it all the more fun to watch.
The show’s energy flags a bit in the second act, as the plot gets more convoluted and the 13-person orchestra switches between New Orleans-style and more traditional orchestrations almost at random. And yet, by the final number — a modified version of “He Is an Englishman” from HMS Pinafore with very of-this-21st-century-moment pro-immigrant lyrics — we’re right back in that joyful space that fans of Pirates have cherished for over a century. (This is the 27th Broadway revival, though the first since Papp’s in the early ’80s.) Pirates! offers only modest concessions to modern times in look and sound, and instead embraces the old-fashionedness of the material in a way that still holds mass appeal. It’s a pirate’s booty-ful treat. ★★★★☆
PIRATES!
Todd Haimes Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through July 27 for $72 to $381
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