Intermezzo

Pirates of Penzance at Wilton's Music Hall

The Pirates of Penzance - Wilton's Music Hall, 11 April 2010

The skull and crossbones has been hoisted over Wilton's Music Hall in the East End for a swift revival of the Union Theatre's award-winning Pirates of Penzance.

The USP of this show is an all-male cast, the tittersome possibilities of which are exploited to the max by increasing the the Major General's complement of daughters from four to an improbable ten or so strapping specimens. They are mercifully wig and makeup-free (the fresh-faced cast also double up as pirates and, with moustaches on sticks, as policemen). The effect is more public school end of term play than drag act. Only the turbanned and mascara-ed Ruth (Samuel J Holmes) edges closer to panto dame territory.

with stealthy step the pirates are approaching

Last summer's highly-praised sell-out Union Theatre production of The Pirates of Penzance is about to return, this time to the fabulous shabby-chic Wilton's Music Hall. 

With a piano instead of an orchestra and all the parts played by men, the show may not be the very model of authenticity, but it does capture the rollicking spirit brilliantly.

Previews from 8 April; prices from £10.

the very model of ein deutscher Major General

Although Germany's most popular English opera, Gilbert und Sullivan's Die Piraten von Penzance is regularly performed up and down the land, as far as I know it's represented by merely one recording - of a 1968 television production.

The cast - all professional opera singers rather than musical theatre specialists - was luxuriously embellished with Arleen Augér (at the very start of her career) as Mabel, and even more surprisingly, the legendary Wagnerian soprano Martha Mödl as Ruth.

Some German versions follow the original very faithfully, but libretto and even some characters were liberally translated in this one, and so I am the very model of a modern Major General becomes Ich bin der britischen Krone Admiral und fixter Flottenchef. And here it is from Arwed Sandner (I love the very solemn God shave the Queen near the end):

Or copy the mp3 from here.