The Brooklyn Paper: ’PIRATES’ IN BROOKLYN
The current issue
Neighborhood Map
Bay Ridge
  • Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
Brooklyn Heights
  • Downtown, DUMBO
Carroll Gardens
  • Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
Fort Greene
  • Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
North Brooklyn
  • Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
Park Slope
  • Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
GO Brooklyn
Dining Guide
Where to GO
Events calendar
Classifieds
The Brooklyn Wire
Not Just Nets
Police Blotter
Perspective
Parenting
Politics
Transit
Podcasts
Brooklyn Cyclones
Merchant news
About The Paper
RSS Feeds
Tropicana, Atlantic City

’PIRATES’ IN BROOKLYN

Brooklyn Family Theatre channels Gilbert & Sullivan

By Paulanne Simmons
for The Brooklyn Paper
The Brooklyn Papers / Greg Mango
Lorinne Lampert, as the Pirate King, and Ty Triplett, as Major General Stanley, in "The Pirates of Penzance."

Tools

Print this story
digg
del.icio.us

At a time when dead playwrights and composers often suffer a dreadful fate in the hands of over-ambitious directors, it’s nice to see directors who know how to nip and tuck and update, and come up with something original that still remains true to the original.

Brooklyn Family Theatre’s production of William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan’s "The Pirates of Penzance," on stage at The Church of the Gethsemane through Dec. 1, is directed by Jonathan Valuckas and Phill Greenland, who also supplied new arrangements and resetting.

Greenland is the community theater veteran who, with Lorraine Stobbe, launched Brooklyn Family Theatre last season with his outstanding production of "Godspell." So it should come as no surprise that Greenland has been able to make fairly deep cuts in songs and dialogue, yet do it so subtly and surreptitiously that when the play ends a mere hour and a half after the lights dim, it’s hard to figure out how it ended so quickly.

But Greenland has done more than merely shorten Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera about a group of kindhearted pirates and the major general’s daughters who fall in love with them. He’s also updated the contents. There’s talk of "pillaging the Staten Island ferry," and the merits of a life of piracy, which "contrasted with Wall Street is comparatively honest."

When Frederic, the dutiful young apprentice pirate, points out that the pirates of Penzance always release captives who claim to be orphans, he adds that as a result, "one would think that New York’s entire Coast Guard was recruited from orphanages."

There’s been a good deal of gender reversals in this production. The Pirate King is played by Lorinne Lampert, whose long red hair and Ethel Merman-style voice and sauciness make one wonder why the part was ever given to a man. And Justin Zell takes the role of Ruth, the nanny. Wearing a gray wig, lots of lipstick and a long dress and apron, Zell takes to its hilarious heights the notion of an aging, ample-bodied nanny falling in love with her 21-year-old charge.

Greenland and Valuckas, however, have wisely left the role of Major General Stanley to a young man from New York University, Ty Triplett, who looks, acts and sings like "the very model of a modern major general" and brings down the house with that show-stopping number.

They also leave the role of Frederic, the unwilling apprentice, to another former NYU student, the sweet-voiced and sincere Aneesh Sheth.

Greenland has rearranged much of the music (synthesized and prerecorded) to give it a very modern and upbeat sound. One has the feeling Sir Arthur would not have been offended.

Although The Church of the Gethsemane offers only a tiny stage and not much space for elaborate scenery (this production’s minimal scenery consists of two billboards with postings of phony local newspaper articles about the supposed exploits of the pirates in Brooklyn), it does provide excellent acoustics. Greenland has enhanced these natural blessings with an excellent sound system composed of three stage microphones, two body microphones and an MP3 player.

And the sound is superb. In fact, quite unlike the case with so many Gilbert and Sullivan stagings, almost every word is clearly heard and understood. Hats off to modern technology!

"The Pirates of Penzance" is the only Gilbert and Sullivan opera to have its world premiere outside England - at the Fifth Avenue Theater in Manhattan. It was an instant hit. Gilbert and Sullivan were admired and applauded, wined and dined. There were authorized productions in many other cities across the nation - from Minnesota to Massachusetts. In fact, impresario D’Oyly Carte’s main problem was keeping pirated productions off the stage.

In the 20th century, the opera has continued to be produced by amateur and professional companies - most notably Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival’s staging for Free Shakespeare in the Park during the summer of 1980, starring Linda Ronstadt and Rex Smith.

Now, it is entirely fitting that Brooklyn Family Theatre should take this opera, first welcomed by an American audience, and make it their own.

Don’t think you can take an "opportunity of escaping with impunity." If you miss "The Pirates of Penzance," you’ll find "a sad mistake it was to make."

 

Brooklyn Family Theatre’s production of "The Pirates of Penzance" plays through Dec.1, Fridays at 8 pm, Saturdays at 4 and 8 pm and Sundays at 5 pm. The Church of Gethsemane is located at 1012 Eighth Ave. at 10th Street in Park Slope. For reservations, call (718) 670-7205.

©2002 Community Newspaper Group


Reader Feedback

Enter your comment below

By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:

You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

First name
Last name
Your neighborhood
Email address
Daytime phone

Your letter must be signed and include all of the information requested above. (Only your name and neighborhood are published with the letter.) Letters should be as brief as possible; while they may discuss any topic of interest to our readers, priority will be given to letters that relate to stories covered by The Brooklyn Paper.

Letters will be edited at the sole discretion of the editor, may be published in whole or part in any media, and upon publication become the property of The Brooklyn Paper. The earlier in the week you send your letter, the better.