Pirates of Penzance

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings is doing the Summer of Angela (Lansbury). I hadn't expected to participate this week, but Lisa switched movies, so here I am, but a few days late because the day was already taken by another post.
Today's movie is "The Pirates of Penzance" from 1983.
You can find Lisa's post here.

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Believe it or not, I have never seen anything by Gilbert & Sullivan.
I have heard one or the other song or rather parts of it and I could even sing those to you (only the tune), but only because I've heard them on TV shows or in movies, I even remember an impressive Simpsons version.
That early gave me the vague impression that you can't go through school in English speaking countries without performing in at least one of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operettas while I wasn't aware they were such a huge thing here in Germany where we had operettas in German by Offenbach or Strauß.
Now was the chance to watch a whole Gilbert & Sullivan operetta - I mean, Kevin Kline as the Pirate King, how could I miss that any longer?

The plot (with spoilers even if you - yes, I'm looking at you - have probably performed in "The Pirates" yourself before 😉).
Yeah, the plot.
It's a bit confusing, to say the least, but that's operettas for you, especially comical ones.

A pirate ship. Pirates. Among them a young pirate, Frederic. As a child he had been taken there by his nurse Ruth who, hard of hearing, had misheard his father's instructions for her to take him to a pilot for apprenticeship.
Now that he has turned 21, he has fulfilled his indentures and is not only free to become a respectable member of society, but has also decided to exterminate the Pirate King and his crew (all of them orphans which keeps them from attacking an orphan even if that person just claims to be one).

Coming ashore with Ruth, the only woman he has ever seen until then, he meets a group of beautiful girls, all of them daughters of the Major General.
One of them, Mabel, answers to his courting and says she will marry him.
Then the pirates come ashore as well and want to marry all of the girls (which reminded me of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"), but their father turns up, claims to be an orphan who will be all alone without them, and the pirates leave.

Frederic is now ready to lead the town police to the Bay of the Pirates, but before he can leave, the Pirate King and Ruth turn up and let him know that his indentures are in fact not fulfilled yet. He was born on February 29th in a leap year, and the contract doesn't say 21 years, but until his 21st birthday, so they will hold him to his duty.
Being a pirate again, Frederic reveals that the Major General has never been an orphan which causes the Pirate King to plan an attack on the castle for the same night.
Frederic leaves Mabel, but promises her to be back once he has turned 84, and she promises to wait for him.

Mabel tells the police sergeant that the pirates will be attacking, so the policemen hide to wait for them.
The pirates win the subsequent fight (during which they all end up in the theater during a performance of "H.M.S. Pinafore", another Gilbert & Sullivan operetta), and the Pirate King tells the Major General to prepare to die.
The sergeant, however, demands that the pirates surrender in Queen's Victoria's name and as loyal subjects the pirates obey.
Before they can be taken away, though, Ruth divulges that they are just noblemen who have go wrong, and they are not only forgiven, but the Major General also gives them his daughters for brides (and Ruth gets courted by the police sergeant 😉).

Theatrical poster 1880
for the New York production

William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan collaborated in making fourteen operas between 1871 to 1896 before they had a fall out whose reasons are still being debated although creative differences, financial matters, and burnout have been named as contributing to it.
"The Pirates of Penzance" is among the most famous ones of those fourteen. It premiered on New Year's Eve 1879 and was an immediate hit with Gilbert's funny libretto and Sullivan's tunes working so well with the often fast and tongue-twisting texts.
Unfortunately, that made it a little difficult for me to follow at times. With some songs, I just let the music take over without even trying to understand the exact words as long as I still got what was going on (I watched on The Internet Archive because the sound was better than on YouTube even if the picture wasn't, so I didn't have subtitles).

Joseph Papp's production, directed by Wilford Leach, moved from Central Park (with Patricia Routledge as Ruth, you can watch that version here) to Broadway (with Estelle Parsons as Ruth, with 787 performances and 7 Tony Award nominations of which it won 3 including Kevin Kline as Best Actor in a Musical) and then to the screen with Kline, Ronstadt, Smith, and Angela Lansbury.

I like musicals (mostly older ones), but there can be too much singing for my liking (I often share my dislike for "Frozen" freely because I think even for a Disney movie it's just too much).
So I could have done without a few of the songs.
The singing, however, wow. It was really amazing.
I had seen videos of Ronstadt from it before, so her range didn't surprise me as much. Her Broadway performance got her a Tony nomination, by the way. The movie was her only one.

I know I had seen Smith somewhere before as well, but I don't remember where. I'm quite sure I never watched his short-lived TV show "Street Hawk", but I know one of his songs, so maybe that was it. Anyhow, I loved his voice.

I already knew about Lansbury's long Broadway career both in straight roles, but also musical roles because I have a "Sweeney Todd" performance with her as Mrs. Lovett on DVD and looked it up back then. So she wasn't a surprise for me.

For some reason, however, I had never known about Kevin Kline singing.
I absolutely loved him here. Singing, jumping, and quite a few times, I was reminded of his role as Otto in "A Fish Called Wanda" (I love this movie so much and he's perfect in it) five years later for which he got an Academy Award, and I enjoyed every bit of it just as much - not just because of his chest ...

Just for him this is worth watching even if the others hadn't been as good.

That was a nice introduction to Gilbert & Sullivan (besides having seen "Topsy-Turvy" years ago). Maybe I will watch more after all if I can find something.


Sources:

1. Gilbert & Sullivan. On: English National Opera
2. Cat Smith: The Pirates of Penzance. On: Film Obsessive, 2020
3. Luisa Lyons: The Pirates of Penzance. On: Filmed Live Musicals, October 2017
4. The Pirates of Penzance. On: Gilbert and Sullivan Archive (via Wayback Machine)
5. Ben Fong-Torres: The Pirates of Penzance. On: The Linda Ronstadt Homepage (an unofficial website)