By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The BGSU Opera Theater’s production of “HMS Pinafore” shows why the work of Gilbert and Sullivan remains so beloved by so many. Because their work remains such a favorite, it’s important to steep young performers into it as a prep for possible future roles. Gilbert and Sullivan operettas come with their own challenges and performance practices.
Any pedagogical aims have to take a back seat to expressing how silly these shows are at the core. And this bubbling production does that.
“Pinafore” like the rest of the duo’s work survives because its humor, even though rooted in the social mores of Victorian England, remains funny and gives the performers a chance to flex their funny bones, and the audience a chance to revel in an evening of tuneful fluff.
“HMS Pinafore, or the Lass who Loved a Sailor,” directed by Geoffrey Stephenson, will be staged tonight (Friday, Nov. 1) at 8 pm. and Sunday at 3 p.m. in Kobacker Hall on the Bowling Green State university campus. Tickets for the production are $8 and can be purchased at bgsu.edu/arts.
The first voices heard at the show are of the audience members who are asked to join in the singing of “God Save the Queen.” The royalty and elite and society at the time certainly need saving when Gilbert and Sullivan sets their sights on them.
The play has its share of strutting yeomen, here the crew of the titular ship, and flouncing maids.
The crew enters high stepping and grinning when called forth by the boatswain (Nick Conner). They are a most agreeable, and as we are told by their leader Captain Corcoran (Luca Laurenco), a most polite crew. He returns favor and never, mostly never, has to curse at them. The ugly and misanthropic Dick Deadeye (Tim Krueger) is the exception to this pleasantness and tries his best to single handedly offset any good feeling.
Corcoran espouses certain egalitarian beliefs
As we are informed he is in charge instead of the able seaman Ralph Rackstraw (Zane Pergram) only because of their difference in birth.
But Corcoran’s open mindedness in these matters will only go so far. He draws the line at his daughter Josephine (Alana Jones) falling in love with Rackstraw, who is after all one “so ignobly born,” Josephine sings.
Corcoran has decided she needs to marry above her station and wed Sir Joseph Porter (Avery Harris), a bookkeeper who has risen to First Lord of the Admiralty, despite never having sailed — he gets seasick.
But Josephine loves Rackstraw, though she has promised her father she will never reveal her love to him. Then Sir Joseph, in the process of trying woo her, unwittingly gives her permission to declare her love to the lowly sailor.
But what secret does Little Buttercup (Hayley Hoss) have? Well, if you’ve sailed with Gilbert and Sullivan before, you probably can guess the kind of reversal that awaits in the last scene.
The cast is as amiable as the Pinafore’s crew.
From the first chorus of “We Shall Sail the Ocean Blue” to the climatic “Oh joy, oh rapture unforeseen,” they revel in the rosing melodies buttressed by the orchestra conducted by Isaac Hunter Page.
Our lovers are blissfully clueless. Pergram’s Rackstraw is in despair. The crew works hard to lift his spirits while Krueger’s Deadeye injects the proceedings with a dose of reality delivered with comic menace.
Jones’ Josephine is flighty, full of poetical musings, as she drifts about the stage.
Laurenco nails the captain’s obliviousness, and Harris sets the tone for his character with his strutting entrance accompanied by his chorus of sisters, cousins, and aunts.
Hoss threads her way through all this. Her Buttercup is both maternal and alluring as “the roundest, rosiest beauty.”
The set by scene and lighting designer Keith Hofacker is evocative, leaving plenty of room for those dancing sailors and maids.
“Pinafore” ends with a wink, and the promise of happily ever after for all the characters.
