Image from a D’Oyly Carte Opera Company souvenir program from 1886, showing Captain Corcoran of the Pinafore (right) being addressed by Sir Joseph Porter with “his sisters and his cousins and his aunts” in tow while Josephine and Ralph enjoy each other’s company in the background (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
Yesterday afternoon I returned to the Blue Shield of California Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to attend the second of the day’s two performances of H.M.S. Pinafore, recognized as one of the “Big Three” collaborations of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. As might be guessed, the production was by the Lamplighters Music Theatre, which has established itself (internationally) as a leading institution in the production of the operettas in the Gilbert and Sullivan (G&S) canon. The stage director was Ellen Brooks and Music Director Baker Peeples served as conductor.
As its Wikipedia page observes, Pinafore was the fourth G&S partnership and the third to be produced by Richard D’Oyly Carte. The show ran for 571 performances, making it, for its time (1878) the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece. It was also the first G&S operetta to succeed on an international scale. (Its “fan base” included Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, later to be Kaiser Wilhelm II.) In spite of the work’s history of over 140 years, Lamplighters has consistently brought fresh originality to its revival performances; and this year’s production, which marked the beginning of the 2019–20 season, was no exception.
Much of that success can be attributed to Brooks’ approach to staging. The “action” is already under way as the members of the audience take their seats. Two of the sailors are asleep by a cannon on the edge of the stage. They are awakened by the sounds of the overture, and one of them starts to mimic the conductor. Once the curtain rises to reveal the deck of the Pinafore, the action is already well under way. Watching that opening scene, one quickly realizes that there are (at least) three generations of vocalists in the chorus, conveying an impression that Lamplighters has sustained through consistent efforts to pass its practices down from one generation to the next.
The cast itself presented a healthy mix of new and familiar talent. F. Lawrence Ewing has established himself as the major performer of what those of my generation would call the “Martyn Green roles.” This is the comic character who always delivers the witty patter song, often on the brink of Sprechgesang with, as Anna Russell put it so well, “a voice like a vegetable-grater.” In this operetta that character is Sir Joseph Porter, the “monarch of the sea.” Ewing’s unerring diction and comedic timing brought refreshing vigor to lines that many of us can recite in our sleep.
The subtitle of Pinafore is The Lass That Loved a Sailor. That lass is Josephine Corcoran, daughter of the Pinafore’s Captain. At the performance I attended, her role was sung by soprano Jennifer Mitchell, fresh from her triumph as Jane Eyrehead in Lamplighters’ over-the-top production of “Trial by Jury Duty” this past April. Mitchell continues to excel in her solid command of Sullivan’s music while always deftly negotiating Gilbert’s texts. The sailor in the title is Ralph Rackstraw, sung by tenor Jackson Beaman, making his Lamplighters debut. His voice was perfectly matched with Mitchell’s; and, through Brooks’ direction, he endowed his “lowly sailor” character with a personality that was (in the words of Noël Coward) “downright, forthright, and upright.”
I was also particularly impressed with Brooks’ approach to Dick Deadeye performed by baritone William Neely. I was reminded of the criticism rained down on Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen for his failure to use a cane properly in last June’s San Francisco Opera (SFO) production of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 31 opera Orlando. Brooks turned Deadeye’s crooked staff into a comic device, which was almost never used in any productive way but was always eye-catching. We all know that the devil is in the details, but that is also where the funniest bits reside.
I noticed that this production was first announced as a new staging with “a historically accurate vision” of the setting. I had to consult The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan to find out just what that vision was. It turned out to be the quarter-deck of the H.M.S. Victory, the flagship of Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, the ship on which he died during the Battle of Trafalgar. This puts it somewhat in the time frame of the Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian (such as Master and Commander) and later than that of the Royal Navy vessel on which Billy Budd is impressed into service. Now that we have had a generous share of “comic relief,” we should all be prepared for that more serious world of Billy Budd that we shall face next month as presented by SFO.
No comments:
Post a Comment