Drag on the British stage goes back to the Elizabethans if not further, a tradition that looks to be immortal. Case in point: Just over a century ago, the 14-year-old future Lord Laurence Olivier made his debut in Stratford-upon-Avon as Kate in an all-boys The Taming of the Shrew, impressing the future Dame Sybil Thorndike as “the best Shrew I ever saw—a bad-tempered little bitch.” And in 2009, the director Sasha Regan took it into her head to mount a grown-up all-male The Pirates of Penzance at a 50-seat house under a railway arch in the Southwark district, on London’s South Bank. Hardly for the first time, Gilbert & Sullivan’s infectiously melodious tomfoolery scored a bull’s-eye.
And thus Regan’s Pirates’ Progress began, leading to larger stages in England, a national tour of Australia, and, in December 2020, a climactic two-night stand at the palatial Palace Theatre in London’s West End. Thanks to the video capture from that last-named venue, us Yanks can at last catch up—as well we should. For Byzantine reasons, The Pirates of Penzance—alone in the G&S canon—had its world premiere not in Merrie Olde but in New York City.
One prominent reviewer deemed Regan’s reboot “as brilliant and heretical as Matthew Bourne’s vision of Swan Lake”—quotable, to be sure, but way off the mark. Whereas Bourne’s iconic male swans are male swans, not maidens under an evil spell, Regan’s half-dressed dudes in white are playing, with all their quirks, the same stock figures that generations of viewers have known and loved. But you won’t be mistaking them for women. And the story they enact is the familiar one of the pirates’ apprentice Frederick, cursed with having been born on the 29th of February. In jersey and knee-length tights, Tom Senior cuts a studly figure in the part and sings with disarming, deadpan candor.
Built like a bouncer, Alan Richardson gives Frederick’s love interest Mabel close-cropped hair, a five-o’clock shadow, and a soprano singing voice that pings the high notes only to nip them quickly in the bud. As Ruth, the nursemaid long past her sell-by date, Leon Craig—another bouncer type—prefigures South Pacific’s bossy Bloody Mary. And hip-hip-hooray for the tale’s three motley authority figures: Oliver Savile as that tender-hearted swashbuckler the Pirate King; David McKechnie in resplendent scarlet as the wily, fast-talking Major General; and Marc Akinfolarin as the bungling Chief of Police, human to a fault.
A loose strolling-player vibe and tight choreography on the spectrum between Stomp and Hamilton add to the exuberance. The “orchestra” is Richard Baker, an exacting musical director alone at his baby grand. But the chief glory of the show is its sincerity. If elbows in the ribs, double takes, and louche double-entendres are your delight, look elsewhere. Gilbert’s diction may be arch, but these players’ delivery is not. However absurd, they own every earnest word.
Sasha Regan’s production of The Pirates of Penzance is available for streaming on BroadwayHD
Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii