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| Brittanie Shipway – Jay Laga’aia -Billie Palin – Trevor Jones – Maxwell Simon in The Hayes Theatre production of “The Pirates of Penzance”. |
Director: Richard Carroll – Asst.Director & Choreographer: Shannon
Burns
Co-Arranger & Musical Supervisor: Victoria Falconer
Musical Director &
Co-Arranger: Trevor Jones
Set Designer: Nick Fry – Costumer Designer: Lily Mateljan
Lighting Designer: Jasmin Rizk – Sound Designer: Daniel Herten
Production Manager: Abbey Pace – Stage Manager: Sheryden Simson
Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse – 3rd – 6th May 2025
Opening night performance on May 3rd reviewed by BILL
STEPHENS
Hayes Theatre has earned an enviable
reputation for its clever reductions of classic Broadway musicals. Canberra
audiences have been treated to several of these productions, notably “Sweet
Charity” and “Calamity Jane”.
This time intrepid show doctor, Richard
Carroll, with the enthusiastic input of his musical collaborator, Victoria
Falconer, has turned his attention to Gilbert & Sullivan and taken his
trusty scalpel to one of their most popular creations, “The Pirates of Penzance”,
and repurposed it as a wickedly silly laugh fest.
Whether or not Gilbert or Sullivan would have
approved, it was obvious from the response of the many of the G. & S. enthusiasts
in the first night audience that they were delighted with the ingenuity of the
production, with the result that every ticket for the whole Canberra season is
already sold out.
Carroll, Falconer and their team of creatives
set themselves an extra degree of difficulty by deciding that all the
characters in this version of Pirates would be played by just five virtuoso
actors.
To this end, set designer Nick Fry has devised
a versatile setting approximating a run-down Victorian theatre, but packed with
ingenious visual surprises. Witty costumes by Lily Mateljan compliment the era while
allowing lightning-fast changes, aided by ingenious lighting and sound by Jasmine
Rizk and Daniel Herten, all monitored by the on-stage stage manager, Sherydan Simson.
There’s even room on stage for those audience
members who paid extra for the privilege only to find themselves unwittingly
engaged in the action.
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| Brittanie Shipway as Ruth and Jay Laga’aia as the Pirate King in “The Pirates of Penzance |
Virtuoso performances are demanded of the cast
who portray one, two or more roles as well as play musical instruments.
Brittanie Shipway delights playing both the
female leads. As Mabel, the young but certainly not naïve heroine, she effortlessly
negotiates the stratospheric coloratura of Poor Wondering One.
Then, with hardly a bat of an eye, she becomes
the more mature and manipulative Ruth, intent on inveigling into marriage, the
handsome, noble, and possibly stupid, 21year-old, Frederick, played with sly
conviction and excellent voice, by Maxwell Simon.
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| Maxwell Simon & Brittanie Shipway as Frederik and Mabel in “The Pirates of Penzance” |
For his part, Jay Laga’aia revels in his
swashbuckling glory as The Pirate King, embraces his feminine side to portray,
with surprising conviction, one of Mabel’s eclectic group of sisters, and joins
Billie Palin in attempting to portray a troupe of singing police recruits battling
with some tricky baton choreography devised by Shannon Burns.
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| Trevor Jones as The Major General in “The Pirates of Penzance” |
But it is the avuncular musical director,
Trevor Jones, who steals the show being whisked around the stage at his piano impersonating
a whole orchestra, singing with sisterly sweetness as one of Mabel’s sisters,
but particularly with his show-stopping turn as the Major-General tossing off
hilarious tongue-twisting lyrics with casual finesse.
It’s all delightfully silly, but remarkably,
in all the threatening chaos, W.S.Gilbert’s story gets told, even though the
story-telling gets a bit bumpy towards the end with the necessity to wind up all
the outrageous shenanigans, and Arthur Sullivan’s music is respected,
particularly in the beautifully sung second act opening, for which the cast
enter the theatre through the auditorium.
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| Billie Palin – Trevor Jones – Jay Laga’aia – Brittanie Shipway as Mabel and her sisters in The Pirates of Penzance” |
Pictures by John McRae
This review first published in the digital edition of CITY NEWS on 04.04.25
