Theater: An immersive bikini-beach Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance

Performed by The Hypocrites

Adapted and Directed by Sean Graney

NYU Skirball Center

December 8, 2017

Chicago’s acting company The Hypocrites began in 1997 as a neighborhood “storefront” group, but has grown in budget and reputation, having now performed coast to coast, including at the Berkeley and American Repertories and the Goodman Theater. They specialize in brisk reworkings of standard plays, including All our Tragic, which combines 32(!) Greek tragedies in one evening, Our Town, and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Their take on The Pirates of Penzance came to New York this week after appearing in past years in Berkeley and Chicago. G&S is a tricky thing to do. On the one hand the topical Victorian political humor is always ripe for updating; yet the very distinctive Offenbach-derived musical style and witty lyrics, and timeless themes of class prejudice and snobbery warrant some preservation. This production pushes pretty far away from classical G&S, yet I think in the end preserves its spirit.

Arriving in the traditional, rather large Skirball Center Theater, I left  my coats and bag in the orchestra seating rows and climbed onto the stage, a performance area is both surrounded and infiltrated by seats and benches. The audience sitting in the middle performance area is instructed to move somewhere else when tapped or pointed at by a performer, since your seat will now become a performing pedestal in a few seconds. 

This worked well, and added to a feeling of barely-controlled fun, yet without much undue (and risky) audience participation in the play itself--this was blissfully limited to some group arm swaying to simulate trees during one aria, and later to two ladies who were asked to assist in some umbrella twirling. There were no sets, and the setting was a low rent beach party venue, complete with Tiki bar where one could buy drinks during the performance (to get there you had to walk in front of the audience, though). The actors’ costumes were consistent with this party setting, as all were in short pants and Hawaiian shirts, but donned appropriate accessories (eye patches, pistols, tutus) to portray pirates, police, or innocent maidens. 

The versatile nine cast members switched between lead roles and chorus, and had distinctive-enough personas to make everything clear. Their annunciation was excellent, as were the mostly British accents, keeping the patter songs and plot humor front and center. The singing was mostly in classic Gilbert and Sullivan style, but there was no orchestra. Instead, arias were mostly self-accompanied on guitar or banjo with some occasional clarinet, violin, or percussion additions. Acting was excellently non-hammy for the most part; the cast negotiated the difficult tightrope between camp and parody well. The whole thing was condensed by company founder Sean Graney into a single 80-minute act, cutting several arias, but the plot was maintained intact, as were all characters. Most important, I left feeling that the spirit of G&S had been honored, if not the distinctive orchestral sound. The actors honored the operetta while seeming to have a really good time and living in their roles, and their enthusiasm was infectious. Shawn Pfautsch as Frederick should be singled out for his lovely tenor, Savoyard style, and balanced and convincing acting.

It’s worth commenting on the trend towards “immersive” theater. In the past couple years I have seen a wide range of this, from elaborate immersive environments with extensive individual audience participation (Then She Fell, The Grand Paradise) to Target Margin Theater’s Mourning Becomes Electra, where the audience moved closer and closer to the action as the play became more claustrophobic, finally ending up onstage behind closed curtains, to productions such as this Pirates and the mediocre Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 where the  audience is minimally involved but some are seated amidst the actors, rather like a set enhancement. Like all trends and gimmicks, the success of this sort of thing depends on how much it seems like a vanity add-on vs. how much it really contributes to the play. This can work--in this Pirates, the interactions were very carefully modulated, and the onstage audience added to the sense of fun and informality. In Natasha, it felt gimmicky and unrelated to the play. But it feels like producers have decided that such immersion is increasingly required to reach the highly-desired “young audience”. We live in a century in which it is seemingly not good enough to view an artistic performance, admiring the skill of professionals who create a new world for us via art, music, singing, dance, or acting. Now we not only must each be able to voice our instant (often not-considered) opinion with up/down thumbs, but contribute to the work itself, whether or not we have any talent. Ergo the Whitney Art Museum with white boards set up next to professional art works upon which we, presumably inspired, are encouraged to make our own art—an idea that mostly distracts me from the original art and makes me want to move on immediately. I fully expect to soon be able to sit in a vacant seat in the Cleveland Orchestra’s viola section, and despite my three months of viola experience, be able to play along with the orchestra violists to fully immerse myself in the performance of the Mahler Seventh Symphony. Or perhaps to dance alongside the snowflakes in NYCB The Nutcracker. So what if my participation diminishes the experience of other audience members or museum goers? It is all about the individual, not the collective these days. If I want to view narcissism I will tune into a presidential speech, not go to the theater or art museum. Bah, humbug.