The Pirates of Penzance

The curtain went up for the first time last night at the Loeb Drama Center as the resident genie uncorked another version of the three-in-one main stage. Some eve perhaps we shall see the third face, but for now the proscenium of Sullivan has replaced the open stage of Shakespeare. And a smashing good picture-frame stage--handsome, good sight-lines, all attention focused on stage--has come from the drawing boards of Messrs. Izenour and Stubbins.

The Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players have inaugurated this new theatre with a team of slow-starting Pirates which soon warmed up and went on to win the flag, although not a world championship. Musical director Mark B. DeVoto's orchestra had me worried at first, with a listless and ragged overture, but loose ends were tucked in as the first act progressed and after the interval there was plenty of spirit, spit and polish, high-lighted by Andrew Schenk's percussion and a pyrotechnic. DeVoto had occasional trouble with the choruses of daughters, pirates and policemen; sloppy diction messed up some numbers, and the orchestra periodically submerged the singers. Handling a company as large as this one is, however, no mean feat and DeVoto did more than well enough to retain his title as Harvard's best theatrical musician.

William D. Gordy's direction showed a sure and witty hand. Stage movement was always pleasant and never confusing, and Gordy invented some of the funniest stage bits I've seen around here. He deserves particular credit for giving us a character who couldn't sheathe his sword, after last season in which too many couldn't extract their weapons. Choreographer Theresa Dickinson provided some pleasing dances, and outstanding movement by the policemen's chorus. Offspring of Sir Robert Peel, they and their well-shined escutcheons boast a bend sinister--they are clearly bastard descendants of Mack Sennett. The Keystone Cops had nothing on this crew in hilarity, and DcVoto should get a medieval medal for putting some of their lines into Gregorian chant.

Like the show itself, William Jacobson started a bit slowly, as the major general, but by the end of his famous patter song he was the very model of a modern etcetera. He coped with Gilbertian poly-syllables without slowing or slurring, and his voice was adequate. Jacobson moves well, with a good command of the stylized posturing required of Savoyards, and does a delightful bed-time ballet.

David Stone's Pirate King presents some problems. Stone sings splendidly, and he has magnificent stage presence--and there is part of the difficulty. Tall and commanding, he attracts too much attention, and his poor movement is all the more obvious because it's difficult not to watch him. He walks awkwardly, and I sometimes thought that he would be a better singing statue than he was actor.

A mellifluous voice is the chief asset of Richard Conrad, who plays Frederick. He also displays a slightly satirical and detached attitude toward the script, shared to a lessor extent by the rest of the company, and far preferable to the D'Oyly Carte embalming job. Occasionally he lapsed into honeyed blandness, but he usually kept his acting good enough to let his singing make him a first-rate performer.

The weaker sex was. The leading women did not match the men; neither Joan Corbett (Mabel) nor Dorothy Maney (Ruth) has a particularly fine voice, and neither of them acts very well. Miss Corbett's sense of timing hurt her performance again and again, making her first entrance almost painful; her voice and Miss Maney's sounded strained, particularly on higher notes. I always enjoy praising actresses, but can find little to say for these except that although they did nothing to help the show they did not hurt it badly.

Visually, this production was most pleasant. Andrew DeShong's two sets seemed useful for a director, providing adequate entrances and varied playing areas. To the eye they were charming. The ruins of a chapel for the second act came, with no detail changed, from the imagination of some great Romantic poet. DeShong's first act sun surpassed the moon that followed it, but both looked implausibly delightful, stuck up against Loeb's giant sweeping cyclorama. Stephen L. Tucker lit the show competently, although there appeared to be a few miscues in the execution of his plot.

The Pirates of Penzance is not, to my mind, one of the better G & S books. This production overcomes the script's defects, despite a few of its own, and provides an entertaining, although not spectacularly so, evening to open the Loeb proscenium theatre.