The British class system was never as rigid as it appeared in the popular imagination or in its critics’ screeds. Thus Gilbert and Sullivan risked nothing by lampooning it, as they did in the 1878 comic opera, “H.M.S. Pinafore.”
The Seagle Festival’s revival of “Pinafore,” to be presented at its Oscar Seagle Seagle Memorial Theater in Schroon on Lake July 9 and July 11 at 7 pm and on July 10 at 2 pm, is hilarious; it reveals the collaborators’ appreciation of how truly absurd such a system would be far more effectively than, say, a traditional staging of the Victorian operetta might.
Perhaps in a more conventional approach, the ship’s Captain Corcoran would be endearing rather than ridiculous, Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., stuffy but not a buffoon, lovers Josephine and Ralph passionate rather than the insipid cyphers we meet in director Richard Kagey’s inspired interpretation.
Kagey’s gleeful staging revels in the show’s silliness. Musically, Sullivan’s energetic and sometimes moving score remains intact. As Kagey demonstrated in last year’s transgressive production of “Pirates of Penzance,” subversion works best when the original is awarded the respect it deserves.
Kagey also trusts the performers to sell the joke; the ensemble attacks Gilbert’s intricate lyrics with complete sincerity while surrounded by escalating anarchy.
Aubrey Campbell, the Sergeant of Police in last year’s Pirates of Penzance, confirmed our impression that his is a once-in-a-generation singing voice. And as he demonstrates here, as Pinafore’s Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., the spectacularly clueless political appointee whose qualifications consist entirely of showing up, he is an actor whose movement, gestures and changes in facial expressions instantaneously convey a character and his story.
Andrew Mack as Ralph Rackstraw, Marlena St. Jean as Josephine, Emma Rogers as Little Buttercup and Daniel Uglunts as Captain Corcoran, are also terrific.
The show opens with the chorus of Jack Tars detouring into a vaudeville routine, as though this were a scene from a Mel Brooks movie.
In fact, Seagle Artistic Director Darren Woods told us, Kagey imagined his version as a “Gilbert and Sullivan Meet Mel Brooks” collision.
(Julian Robbins’ Dick Deadeye is a direct descendant of Igor, the bug-eyed, hunchbacked assistant to Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.)
There is nothing in this production, however, that would discomfit anyone with a genuine affection for songs such as “I am the Captain of the Pinafore” the duet, “Refrain, Audacious Tar” and chorus performances of “We Sail the Ocean Blue” and “He is an Englishman.”
And by the way, the show’s famously improbable conclusion is a comic bomb, detonated with precision and force by this extravagantly talented cast.
Seagle Festival is located at 999 Charley Hill Road, Schroon Lake, NY. For tickets and information, call 518-532-7875 or visit seaglefestival.org.
