British Pirates: Woke? Conservative? Witty!
Volksoper. The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan promises an evening of non-stop laughter and excellent music
Die Presse review by Jens F. Laurson
Watch out, the pirates are coming – from the notorious British seaside town of Penzance to Vienna (presumably via circuitous waterways). “The Pirates of Penzance”, alongside “The Mikado” arguably the best-known of the operettas by the brilliant duo W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan outside the English-speaking world, have taken the Volksoper by storm with their humorous and heart-warming performances – and won over the audience. The premiere on Friday evening was a great success.
Everyone involved played their part in this success, fundamentally of course Gilbert & Sullivan. On the one hand, there is Sullivan’s music, who wrote music of almost lavish quality for the light-hearted and thoroughly zany operettas of the artistic duo. The Volksoper Orchestra played its part in this, performing under the baton of Chloe Rooke at the very highest level throughout the evening, with tireless enthusiasm.
But Gilbert’s libretto also played a part. Although it is some 150 years old and very British, indeed, and pokes fun at many quintessentially British quirks of the Victorian era – it lends itself superbly to being transposed into a different cultural context and a different era. This, in turn, was largely down to the thoroughly successful adaptation of the text by Jennifer Gisela Weiss and, of course, the directing duo from Spymonkey (Aitor Basauri and Toby Park).
Double frame narrative
To bring the story of the overly soft-hearted pirates – who can do anything except harm orphans – and their now-grown, dutiful apprentice Frederic closer to the Viennese audience, they give the opera a double frame narrative. First, we have the creators’ great-granddaughters, ‘Gillian Gilbert’ (Lucy Hopkins) and ‘Sally Sullivan’ (Petra Massey), who are staging the opera and performing in it. The former is a shrewd avant-garde director by profession, the latter is… a great-granddaughter – simpler in nature and with ambitions to sing. Actually, she’d quite like to sing the lead role of Mable – and get to know the dapper singer playing the police sergeant a bit better. The interactions between the two ladies (instant audience favourites) provide context – and plenty of laughs that break the fourth wall.
The framework surrounding this framework is the satire of a conservative politician who plays the role of the Volksoper’s interim director and believed he had brought a beautifully conservative production to the house, very much in the style of the old D’Oyly Carte Opera Company performances. This opens up the opportunity for Spymonkey to completely revamp the opera via Gillian Gilbert. After all, whilst studying the libretto, one noticed a few ‘blatant no-gos’ in The Pirates and – oh dear – ‘age discrimination’. So away with it.
If questionable elements or those rooted in a bygone era are replaced by equally funny or even better ideas – wonderful. This is the case, for example, with Nanny Ruth, who has been relocated to Switzerland, whose thick Alemannic accent (“Come with me, my sweet little boy / To Uri, to my little room” – wonderfully exaggerated by Johanna Arrouas) also explains how the mix-up occurred, sending poor Freddy to the pirate school instead of the private school.
Absurd sea creature costumes
In fact, there’s a lot that works brilliantly in the concept. The male singers in the ensemble are provided by the ‘police choir’ – and dressed in increasingly absurd sea creature costumes from scene to scene, which ensures non-stop laughter. It’s also a clever parallel to the Constables’ chorus featured in the piece, for whom Gilbert himself writes a pronounced tendency to avoid danger into the text. And to avoid the sexist attitudes of a bygone era (and/or to get one over on the politician), the pirates are unceremoniously cast entirely with women. Does it make a difference? After five seconds of surprise and adjustment: none, apart from that one octave. The set and costumes (Julian Crouch) are deliberately kept old-fashioned, conventional and neat in this self-referential play on the question of modernity and tradition in theatre.
It thus caters to every audience: progressive sensibilities are prominently displayed, only to then, almost unnoticed, deliver a wonderfully bourgeois-conservative, superbly crafted and, above all, delightfully entertaining production: One could almost regard it as a stroke of genius; after all, Gilbert – for whom the kingdom was, of course, sacred – took aim at whatever came into his sights: the judiciary, the military, culture, customs, patriotism, morals, prudery. And where Gilbert merely hints at things, Sullivan provides the musical clue: Mabel’s love aria ‘Poor wand’ring one’ actually sounds innocent – yet the chromatic slips and coloratura suggest a readiness for a certain lack of innocence. Surprisingly liberal abysses open up behind Gilbert’s conservatism when he exposes its absurdities (here: a sense of duty and loyalty to the Emperor). The same goes for the Spymonkeys, only the other way round. Deliberately? It doesn’t matter – the work of art is more intelligent than the artists.
And so Frederic (Timothy Fallon, rosy-cheeked and sweet, with a precise young voice that fit like a parrot on a shoulder) and Mable (Nicole Chévalier, lyrical, cheeky and witty) and everyone else in this cast, without a single weakness, navigated the terrain between slapstick and cannon fire, non-stop gags and sabre-rattling, Shirley Temple curls, and sing and act their way carefree towards the creative, anti-colonialist happy ending. If one were to trust the audience not to laugh for ‘the wrong reasons’, the world – or the pirate sloop – would surely not go under. But for those who don’t like it, (spoiler!) the giant conservative octopus drags them into the depths of the sea.