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Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan are rolling in their distinguished graves. And rolling more aggressively than ever before, thanks, in no small part, to the theaters of Chicago. A guidepost of Victorian theater, the duo’s “The Pirates of Penzance” has been performed in and around our fair city over and over again these past twelve months, and in any and every orientation but ye ole proscenium arch. Last spring, the Marriott Theatre, by spatial necessity, presented the work to great acclaim on their round stage. Likewise, but not-so-likewise, The Hypocrites, the last two years and coming up on a third, have performed the operetta in promenade style affront a backdrop of a hipster beach party. And now, perhaps most brazenly, the Tall Ship Windy has “Penzance” actually leaving port aboard a functional vessel.
As far as I am aware, the Tall Ship Windy’s production, their first musical stage outing, is the only time “Penzance” has ever been performed aboard a genuine sailing ship–at least on the Great Lakes. I am quite surprised it took so long. Since Wilford Leach’s 1980 New York Shakespeare Festival production, which landed the operetta a newfangled musical theater sensibility and a swashbuckling attitude, “The Pirates of Penzance” has placed a great deal more emphasis on its piracy than it did in 1879. Where once the fearsome fops “poured o poured the pirate sherry,” now they gutturally “arrrrgh!,” sword fight and guzzle down Caribbean rum. Driving the “yo ho” home, the Pirate King in Ethan McSweeny’s production at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival this summer was a dead ringer for Johnny Depp. What is lost in these imaginings, however, is the satire. After all, the scary, but dimwitted pirates are, in the end, revealed to be nothing more than hereditary peers having a bit of fun on the shores of England. Yes, “Pirates” takes place entirely in England.
