The Pirates of Penzance
★★★☆☆ Piratical
Paradise in Augustines (Venue 152): Mon 19 – Sun 25 Aug 2024
Review by Rebecca Mahar
The University of St. Andrews Gilbert & Sullivan Society brings one of their namesake’s most popular and enduring operettas to the Fringe with The Pirates of Penzance.
When pirate apprentice Frederic reaches his twenty-first year, he is released from his indenture to the Pirate King and his crew, and immediately declares that he must now devote himself to the extermination of all pirates.
Matthew Colquhoun as Frederic. Pic: Atlas Camera
Declining Frederic’s offer to give up piracy and return to civilisation, the pirates depart, leaving Frederic with Ruth, their maid of all work, and his former nursemaid, whose hard hearing was responsible for his being apprenticed to a pirate in the first place, rather than a ship’s pilot. Upon glimpsing a coincidentally approaching group of sisters, Frederic sends Ruth away for deceiving him about her beauty, and at once falls madly in love with one of the sisters, Mabel.
All of this happens in the first third of the show, which is snappy even for Gilbert & Sullivan, and merely hints at the hijinks to come in the rest of play, along with their characteristic neatly-wrapped, utterly absurd ending.
Directed by Aliza Meyers, with Musical Direction by Abby Bailey, this production makes a good effort at the Savoy Opera classic, with a number of bright moments shining through a generally low energy, adagio performance.
competent
Sophie Longstaff plays a competent Mabel, her facial expressions and personality making up for a slightly squeezed high end. Although in the beginning they have a tendency to talk in each other’s general direction rather than to one other, Matthew Colquhoun and Brannon Liston-Smith are charming as Frederic and the Pirate King respectively, with vocal timbres that are perfectly at home in Gilbert & Sullivan.
Oliver Suthersanen-Tutt is delightful as Samuel, the Pirate King’s lieutenant, and Lucile Belorgey embodies Ruth with a slightly crafty woebegone-ness that lends credence to her plan to marry handsome young Frederic.
The Sisters/The Major General’s Daughters. Pic: Atlas Camera
The standout performance of the show belongs to the chorus of sisters: Kate Nolting, Ava Daniels, Taylor Colbeth, Bella Yow, Jillian Mcleod, and Selma Bystrand-Straumits move and sing as a tight-knit unit, lifting the energy and excitement of the stage when they appear. Each has given their character individuality within the conglomerate of “the Major-General’s daughters”, with Colbeth’s Isabel in particular appearing delighted at the prospect of marrying a pirate when first accosted. As Edith, Bystrand-Straumits fearlessly fills the role of the group’s leader, and is more than a match for the Pirate King.
Apart from its pacing issues, this production also falls prey here and there to not trusting itself to be enough. Panto-like interjections such as “Who approaches our all but inaccessible lair? Could it be my Amazon delivery driver?” and others break the G&S convention whereby the characters inhabiting the opera must take its events seriously. We know it’s funny, we know it’s absurd; let it speak for itself.
The sisters’ reactions to Frederic’s sung line “oh, is there not one maiden here, whose homely face and bad complexion, have caused all hope to disappear, of ever winning man’s affection” prove that it’s possible to put humour and even modern sensibility into G&S without trying to make it something it’s not.
relaxed performance
The showing of Penzance that Æ attended was a relaxed performance, which is designed to cater to individuals with autism, learning disabilities, neurodiversities, or other sensory sensitivities, welcoming them into the theatrical space under conditions that strive to lower barriers of attendance and enjoyment.
In this case, the house lights were left on at a low level during the performance, the preshow announcement emphasised that it was absolutely fine to audience members to get up and leave/re-enter if needed, and the company came out to introduce their characters and give a brief synopsis of the plot before the show started properly.
The offering of these types of performances is gaining traction in the theatre industry, but is by no means yet a standard, and the St. Andrews G&S Society is to be commended for making Pirates of Penzance welcoming to all.
Running time: Two hours (no interval)
Paradise in Augustines (Studio), 41 George IV Bridge, EH1 1EL (Venue 152)
Monday 19 – Sunday 25 August 2024
Daily: 3:30pm
Details and tickets at: Book here
Facebook: @gilbertandsullivan
Instagram: @standrewsgands
Lucile Bolerget as Ruth. Pic: Atlas Camera
ENDS
