Boys Will be Girls!

My review of the all-male cast version of The Pirates of Penzance
by W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 


produced by Sasha Regan

at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford

4th - 9th May 2015

This joyous production by Sasha Regan’s talented team of the old favourite, using an all-male cast, really deserves to be a sell-out. It takes the Victorian operetta into a new dimension. And I suspect that the original creators of the work would have loved it, given Gilbert’s satirical impulses and Sullivan’s genius for writing a good tune.

 The plot is, of course, ridiculous. In the first scene the young hero Frederick (Samuel Nunn) is being released from his debentures as an apprentice pirate, to which his nursemaid Ruth (Alex Weatherall) committed him by mistake instead of apprenticing him as a pilot. There’s a fierce pirate king and his crew who turn out to be soft-hearted failures. Then there’s “the very modern model of a modern major general” (Miles Western) who is a know-all and a poet; a cowardly police force; and a moral dilemma for Frederick over duty versus love is based on a legalistic quibble and solved by a satirical piece of nonsense.

 But it’s all an excuse for some great singing and an even greater range of comic dancing and acting. Each member of the cast seems to have a vocal range from baritone to counter-tenor. The romantic arias and duets sung by Frederick with Ruth and with Mabel (Alan Richardson) are largely played straight and are very beautiful. Richardson’s voice is intensely sweet and reached very high ranges. I almost forgot that the singer was a rather stocky young man in a dress.

 The troupe’s ensemble work and stagecraft are brilliant: the approach of the “maidens” to the stage from the auditorium was hilarious. No longer pirates, they had changed voices, body language and frilly dresses, but had not put on wigs, “falsies” or make up. The resulting transformation to coy Victorian misses was all the funnier given that one had glasses and a hairy chest and all had short-back-and-sides haircuts. Their fright on meeting the pirates had us in fits of laughter as they variously fainted, threw hysterics and had to be slapped by their sisters, or cowered in tears, clutching their handkerchiefs.

I wish I had space to tell you in detail all the gems of comic acting, singing and choreography that make this wonderful production so memorable. Fill this auditorium to the brim! Quickly, get tickets and catch this riot of an entertainment before it leaves Guildford for Yorkshire.

Janice Windle

5th May 2015