The Pirates of Penzance

Join us as we finish off the trilogy of the 3 most popular Gilbert and Sullivan operettas with The Pirates of Penzance… or The Slave of Duty.

In 1879, W.S. Gilbert wrote the classic tale of young Frederic and his strong sense of duty and 122 years later, the show still has audiences rolling in the aisles as they watch pirates with a weakness for orphans, a Major-General who “purchases” his ancestors, and 2 lovers who end up on opposite sides of a battle due to their unwavering sense of duty. Kent Johnson once again takes the helm and brings the audience into the topsy-turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan.

This show’s comedy comes from what is considered a lackadasical value today but was once considered the utmost indicator of propriety: a need to adhere to one’s moral duty. It centers aroudn 21-year-old Frederic, erroniously apprehended as a pirate instead of a pilote due to his uneducated nurse Ruth’s misundestanding. Having made this promise to his father on his death bed, the young lad thus seves and the curtain opens with his time almost up. The raunchy pirate gang he grew up with actually has a high code of ethics themselves, refusing to rob any orphans. Young Frederic thus learned honor and duty but still perceives their profession as disreputable and attempts to convert them as his final act. They turn him down becausee they enjoy their galivanting lifestyle.

Ruth is a matronly 47 years old and Frederic has never set eyes upon anty other female. He believes her assurances that she is as desirable as any 17 year old and he agrees to take her away from the ship where she toiled as a maid. He realizes she deceived him somewhat when his eyes fall upon a bevy of blushing beauties who invade the secluded lair. The 6 sisters strut on the shore, unaware they are being watched by dashing Frederic. When he reveals himself, they swoon over him, dispelling any myths of repressed Victorian maidens’ images. Thr fairest of them all, however, is Mabel and it is, predictably, love at first sight.

The swashbuckling pirates then descend upon the girls and threaten to whisk them away, a fate they protest noisily – against their inner longings, I suspect. The arrival of the Major-General puts an end to these high antics, as he is, or so he states, an orphan himself.

Some time later, the Major-General is overcome by remorse at his strategem as he sits brooding in the Gothic ruin he purchased complete with a cemetary full of ancestors. Frederic offers to organiza a phalanx of bumbling Britis Bobbies to mount an assault against the purates. Before this attack takes place, however, Ruth returns with the Pirate King to inform Frederic that there is a slight problem. They have just discovered that he is indebted to the pirates til his 21st birthday, and it turns out he was born on February 29th of a leap year, thus has just celebrated his 5th birthday. Once again, Frederic is torn by conflicting loyalties.

The real moral of the story lies in Gilbert’s contempt for the British Empire’s hypocrisies, particularly with elitism and class consciousness, a theme recurrent throughout his work. He is at his cruelest best when poking fun at the inept aristocratic authority of the ruling class.