Sherry Chandler

My latest Netflix adventure was in ordering what I thought was the 1983 film version of the Pirates of Penzance, the one with Kevin Kline and Linda Rondstat. What I got was the 1980s made-for-tv video of the stage performance, done for the New York Shakespeare Festival. For reasons I can’t fathom, Netflix doesn’t seem to carry the movie.

I pretty quickly got over the initial twinge of disappointment. The quality of the video for this filmed stage play is terrible. They seem to have worked with several fixed cameras, and the lighting is stage lighting, which for at least one of the cameras really leached out the colors. But the performances are stellar. “Far better than the movie version!” says the IMDb user’s comment, and I agree.

I’m a Kevin Kline nut. The man is intelligent, handsome, lithely athletic, and he looks as good as Errol Flynn in a shirt open practically to the navel. (In fact, he looks a good deal like Flynn, whom I think he may have been channelling in this performance.) Once, shortly after A Fish Called Wanda I think, I read a reviewer’s comment that Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with an actor like Kline. Certainly since the days of Wanda, The Big Chill, and Silverado (that would be the 1980s), he doesn’t seem to have made a really compelling movie. (Of course, as far as I’m concerned, the same might be said of Kevin Costner, who was brilliant in Silverado but then decided to take himself seriously.) I enjoyed his performance in DeLovely and as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but these were not exactly blockbuster movies. I even liked Life as a House.

After watching this Pirates, I’ve decided that Kline is really in his element as a stage actor. He was leaping, doing Russian saber dances, and singing for two hours and never any sign of strain. (Of course, he was only 33 years old at the time.) He won a Tony for this performance, and deservedly so.

My son, who has played tuba through 6-minute marching band competitions, was marvelling at the whole casts’ breath contol. True, Kline doesn’t have much of a bass range, but the pirate king, as villain, is written as a bass-baritone, which I think is actually more difficult. Anyway, the hero (Rex Smith) wasn’t much of a tenor either. Though he was suitably blond and buff, he tended deliver his songs with a bit of a soul inflection. Neither is up to D’Oyly Carte standards as a vocalist, but then I doubt that D’Oyly Carte puts on quite such a vigorous production.

The orchestra was not quite D’Oyly Carte, either, seeming to consist mostly of vibes, synthesizers, and electric bass, with some brass and woodwinds. The pit was surrounded by the split-level stage and was used for stage business. The conductor was practically one of the players.

Anybody who was alive in the 70s and aware of pop music at all knew that Linda Ronstadt was doing Gilbert & Sullivan. It was all the buzz. Ronstadt does serious music. And she does it very well. Hers is probably the best voice in the ensemble. But her part is dull. Although they let her ham it up a little bit, she gets none of the fast patter songs that always bring down the house, like “I am the very model of a modern major general” or “a policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” (In fact, they write in a patter song, “My Eyes are Fully Open,” from Ruddigore for Kline, Smith, and the contralto.) Ronstadt’s role is (obviously) the soprano, the heroine, all earnest love and sweet trilling ballads.

In Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye points out that “The technical hero and heroine [in comedy] are not often very interesting people… ” (p. 167). And so it is in Gilbert & Sullivan.

The real plum of a female role in The Pirates of Penzance is the contralto, Ruth. Gilbert & Sullivan seem to like to make the contralto a lovelorn aging woman and they don’t break that pattern here. In the movie, the role was done by Angela Lansbury, whose work I admire a great deal. But I was delighted in the play to see Patricia Routledge in the role. Up to this point, I’d only seen her in the Britcom Keeping Up Appearances, which I can barely stand to watch. As Ruth, though, she is completely winning and a very good foil for Kline. She has the presence to stand up to his star quality and scene stealing. She seems to be having a rollicking good time.

And then there’s Tony Azito, who died in 1995, as the Sargeant of Police and George Rose , who died in 1988, as Major General Stanley.

I mean, you just really need to see this. IMDb gives it an 8.5 rating; the movie only 7. See Wikipedia for a plot synopsis (such as it is) of The Pirates of Penzance or The Slave of Duty. Also, there’s a nice Gilbert & Sullivan Archive with histories, lyrics, and midi files at Boise State.

Added note from Frye:

At the end of the play, [a twist] in the plot that brings hero and heroine together causes a new society to crystallize around the hero, and the moment when this crystalliation occurs is the point of resolution in the action, the comic discovery…