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Frederic (Ryan MacPherson) woos Mabel (Talise Trevigne) in Portland Opera's "Pirates of Penzance."
(Cory Weaver)
In the spring, it often happens that an opera company’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of operetta. It’s a welcome tradition, the winding down of the season in relaxed, unbuttoned fashion, and this year
celebrates it with a romp, The Pirates of Penzance. If you read no further, note only that the show, which opened Friday night at Keller Auditorium, fulfills the fundamental goal of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, which is to amuse.
The production,
in 2011, is in fact a terrifically fun take on the story of the apprentice pirate Frederic, who attempts to leave his trade on his 21st birthday but is drawn back in on a technicality, his having been born on Feb. 29.
Gilbert and Sullivan made a grand and lively hash of their 1879 show, loading it with snappy tunes, boisterous choruses and parodies of Verdi’s “Il trovatore” and other popular operas. Portland Opera’s version expands on the parody with a handful of passages in new orchestrations for sudden shifts of genre — one scene turns into a gospel number (successfully, with Shalanda Sims as soloist), another adopts hip-hop (not so successfully). Rauch’s fast-paced direction and Randy Duncan’s lively choreography contribute to a sense of madcap, barely contained mayhem, a tongue-in-cheek take that still honors the operetta’s music and narrative.
The soul of the show on opening night was the scene-stealing soprano Talise Trevigne as Mabel, the youngest daughter of Major General Stanley and Frederic’s love interest. She was a fresh, radiant presence with sweet high notes and keen comic timing, and she managed to keep the nuttiness in check while happily playing along. As the stalwart, duty-bound Frederic, tenor Ryan MacPherson was similarly firm-voiced and funny.
Other key performances came from Daniel Okulitch as the Pirate King, Cindy Sadler as the nanny-turned-pirate-wench, and Kevin Burdette as the Sergeant of Police, all of whom combined rich singing and broad physical comedy.
Amid the merriment, Portland Opera’s Pirates had to overcome some unevenness. Amplification was spotty, with some singers clearly miked and others sounding bare and distant, and the bizarre mix of putatively English accents sometimes made the Dick Van Dyke of Mary Poppins sound as authentic as the Rex Harrison of My Fair Lady by comparison.
Occasionally, it was just clumsy. You might think that special care would be given to the operetta’s best-known number, the tongue-twisting patter song “I am the very model of a modern Major General,” but the orchestra under Daniel Gary Busby consistently raced ahead of a tired-sounding Robert Orth, who was positioned on a high platform about as far from the pit as he could be. Busby and the players elsewhere threatened to run away from the singers with accelerated tempos, though the rest of the evening was generally more in sync.
The look of the show matched the sound, bright and breezy, with puppet seagulls setting the seaside scene at the outset and spare but striking sets providing an open, flexible space for continuous action under Jane Cox’s nuanced lighting. If this Pirates shows what a partnership between the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Portland Opera can bring, then set sails and anchors aweigh.
--James McQuillen