Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
✭✭✭✭✩
music by Arthur Sullivan, libretto by W.S. Gilbert, directed by Lezlie Wade
Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford
May 31-October 21, 2017
“A British tar is a soaring soul”
The Stratford Festival has not staged Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore since 1992 and has not staged any G&S comic opera since The Pirates of Penzance in 2012. Unlike that Pirates, the new Pinafore emphasizes Sullivan’s music, Gilbert’s dialogue and fine singing over gimmickry. Yet, this Pinafore does not reach the heights of the glory days of G&S at Stratford in the 1980s when the magical collaboration of designer Susan Benson with director and choreographer Brian Macdonald brought a consistent visual wit to the operettas that matched the wit of the words and music.
Director Lezlie Wade has decided to relocate the action from 1878 on the deck of the H.M.S. Pinafore anchored off Portsmouth to a English country house being used as a naval hospital on New Year’s Eve 1918. One might think that the new time and place would lend a darker tone to the action, but it does affect it at all. Wade’s concept seems to be that some of the staff and patients are presenting H.M.S. Pinafore as a New Year’s Eve entertainment. That idea might lead one to think that Wade would emphasize that the play-within-a-play was a home-made production. But Wade doesn’t do that either.
The point of Wade’s concept seems merely to do something different with the piece and nothing more. It does allow for a visually appealing transformation of the Douglas Paraschuk’s set of a manor into the ship and back again at the end. It may be pointless spectacle that in no way aids our understanding of the operetta but at least it does not affect the piece in any way.
Other than this frame, Wade’s good choices in direction about equal her bad choices. Wade allows stage business with Dick Deadeye to distract from the lovely part-song rendition of “A British Tar”. (Hint: never attract attention away from Sullivan’s part-songs or madrigals. They are some of the finest music in the operettas.) During the female chorus’s entrance song “Gaily tripping”, Wade has Sir Joseph Porter’s female relatives carry oars onstage with them as if, unlikely as it is, they had rowed his boat themselves. Through the kind of slapstick usually seen with people turning about carrying ladders, the relatives manage to knock down the entire crew. This isn’t actually funny since it works completely contrary to the words: “Ladies who can smile so brightly, Sailors welcome most politely”. Wade initially presents Ralph Rackstraw as a klutz who accidentally steps into pails, nearly falls down stairs and bumps into doors. Then, suddenly, he has no more to do with slapstick. Wade somehow thinks it’s funny to have Cousin Hebe without motivation suddenly throw up in a bucket in the midst of dialogue and then carry it off very slowly. My audience groaned at this but laughter was sparse.
On the other hand, Wade is excellent at keeping Little Buttercup and the secret that is a “canker-worm” gnawing away at her heart foremost in our minds. This gives the song “Things are seldom what they seem” much greater meaning than usual as Buttercup tries in vain to hint at her secret to the Captain. Wade also gives Buttercup enough gestures and expressions that we know from early on that she loves the Captain. Wade also makes Cousin Hebe, usually forgotten until the finale, a more interesting figure. Here Wade shows Hebe delightedly spying on the various trysts between Ralph and Josephine. At first, we think that she must be doing this on Sir Joseph’s behalf. Yet, anyone who knows the ending will realize that she is pleased if Sir Joseph’s marriage plans with Josephine falls through because that increases her own designs upon him. As with Buttercup and the Captain, Wade makes sure we notice Hebe’s almost doglike devotion from when she first enters carrying all his luggage. Another fine touch is to have Ralph buy a pink ribbon from Buttercup only to find that he is never alone together with Josephine long enough for him to present it.
What really makes this Pinafore shine is how well it is sung. For the most part the Festival has cast actors who may have appeared in musicals but who also can sing with the full, rounded tone tone and breath control needed for opera and operetta. One of the main delights of the show are all the songs sung by Mark Uhre as Ralph Rackstraw. None of his songs are comic and therefore require a fine voice to put them across. Uhre produced exactly the kind of cultured tenor that is perfect for these songs and indeed for the British art repertory in general. The high notes he floats at the end of “A Maiden Fair to See” are simply heavenly. Besides this, Uhre surprises with his expertise at acting slapstick and in delivering with such aplomb the comically polysyllabic speeches that Gilbert has written for Ralph as an indication of his high-born birth.
As Josephine, Jennifer Rider-Shaw uses a bright, fully operatic soprano for her songs and brings out more meaning in them than I have ever heard before. This is first time I have ever found Josephine’s scena “The Hours Creep on Apace” both gripping and humorous at once. Although Josephine claims in the piece to be torn between love and reason, Rider-Shaw is able to show with a certain air of distraction that Josephine’s images of of life with Ralph versus life with Sir Joseph are both productions of her fantasy rather than any real knowledge. Rider-Shaw’s approach thus turns the piece into a subtle satire of literary depictions of class differences that an impressionable young woman like Josephine has imbibed. Rider-Shaw effortlessly hits her high notes and in typical operetta fashion they soar sustained above the various busy utterances of the chorus.
Steve Ross is so closely associated with musicals that it is a pleasant surprise that as Captain Corcoran he can also sing in a straightforward classical style. This is particularly evident in his solo “Fair Moon to Thee I Sing” that opens Act 2, a reflective non-comic song that he delivers well, high notes and all, with great sensitivity.
As Sir Joseph Porter, Laurie Murdoch is just as pompous and precise as one could wish. He delivers his signature song “When I Was a Lad” without a hint that his character is aware of its irony which is just as it should be. Wade encourages Murdoch to use an odd popping sound he makes as a vocal filler which may be funny but has nothing to do with the character.
The one casting choice some may question is Lisa Horner as Little Buttercup. This is the contralto role usually associate with a plus-sized elderly woman. Horner is neither round nor plump as Buttercup is described and is the only major character to sing in a brassy Broadway voice rather than in a classical style, although a classical voice does lurk within as her lowest notes demonstrate. Purists may shudder, but it doesn’t really matter. Horner is a consummate comedienne and makes Buttercup much more of an interesting character than is usually the case. Her fortune-telling song “Things are seldom what they seem” becomes funnier as it proceeds as Horner shows Buttercup’s growing frustration as the Captain fails to catch her drift.
Other fine performances come from Glynis Ranney as Hebe, who is the first to be so outraged at the Captain’s swearing, and as Bill Bobstay, Marcus Nance, an actor who has sung opera and lends his deep, resonant voice to the key song “He is an Englishman”. Wade gives the character Dick Deadeye more to do, rather incongruously, as the ship’s photographer, but Brad Rudy brings out his misanthropic nature well, which interestingly is one that supports the status quo of the separation of classes.
Choreographer Kerry Gage has added dance to the show wherever possible, the men’s dancing often featuring the acrobatics of Devon Michael Brown, who is so impressive in Guys and Dolls. The women’s chorus is no longer “His sisters and his cousins, / Whom he reckons up by dozens, / And his aunts!” since they have been reduced from twelve in the original to only six, not counting Hebe. Therefore, the lyric has been changed to “Whom he reckons half a dozen”.
Anyone looking for an exceptionally well-sung professional G&S production to see this summer need look no further. Its content and and its short length (coming in at only two hours) also make it appropriate for a family friendly outing and likely more fun for the parents than the Festival’s Treasure Island. Though Lezlie Wade’s direction could be cleverer and more focussed, she at least refuses to weigh down the action with so much gimmickry that it obscures the wit inherent in Sullivan’s music and Gilbert’s words. Stratford hasn’t given us such an inventive but respectful approach to G&S in years, so there is even more reason to see this H.M.S. Pinafore while you can.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Members of the company of H.M.S. Pinafore, Laurie Murdoch (centre) as Sir Joseph Porter; members of the company with Lisa Horner (centre) as Little Buttercup; Mark Uhre as Ralph Rackstraw and Jennifer Rider-Shaw as Josephine. ©2017 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.
2017-07-21
H.M.S. Pinafore