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Things seldom what they seem
Show 'em how: Neil Moors as Captain Corcoran of H.M.S.Pinafore, crew in attendanceHMS Pinafore
University of Warwick Arts Centre
****
Is staging
HMS Pinafore (aka:
The lass that loved a sailor)
with an all-male cast a bit like
mounting King Lear
with an all-female line-up? Well, a
male Ophelia or Gertrude didn’t bother Shakespeare; these days it’s the
sort of thing Deborah Warner or Fiona Shaw wouldn’t bat an eyelid at. If
Helen Mirren can pull off a passable Prospero, why not a bloke as Little
Buttercup? Alex Weatherill’s tenderly
simpering Buttercup, who reveals at the end her (his) ghastly faux
pas (nurse abuse) which brings about a happy ending to this
potpourri of Gilbertian nonsense, is one of the many treasures in
this production. It’s winning and winsome in ever so many respects, even
if it just lacks that National Theatre or Donmar finesse and quality one
might hope for. Actually, what it misses is
that Ivor Novello touch. Can you imagine the funnels and turrets,
elaborate catwalks, elegant gubbins-filled bridge, camp officers’
uniforms, cabins furnished in floral bad taste, nimbly shinned-up
ladders he might have deployed? Witness the fabulous steam liner set of
Cole Porter’s Anything Goes at the Kilworth House Theatre near
Lutterworth recently. This Pinafore – the
ship - consists of no more than a cluster of bunk beds, sometimes very
cleverly used in Sasha Regan’s chaps-all production, but making for very
dull visuals (Ryan Dawson Laight, the designer, doesn’t seem to have
been awarded a ripping budget; or was it sketched on the back of a
napkin at Kettner’s or some Soho dive?). Yet here, it’s what the eager, splendidly-marshalled cast does with it that matters. And they are a very, very nimble lot indeed. Almost half of them play girls, as once the mothers and the aunts turn up we find ourselves with a 50 per cent handbag crew. Except that instead of flowery hats and prim umbrellas, we get some very tight-fitting short shorts, elegant legs and brilliantly feminine twirlings. Brilliant, because the cast, and Regan as director, elects not to opt for camp: instead of mere send-up, she embraces you with something one could virtually dub beautiful: it’s funny, but also touching, and affecting, and yes, marvellously moving. Shortest of the shorts are
reserved for a delicious performer, Richard Russell Edwards,
Alex Weatherill’s homely
Buttercup, made up like a charlady but quietly the soul – or heart - of
the mixed-up storyline, has her (his) own line in knowing innocence.
When at the end we find that good sturdy, sterling Ralph Rackstraw is
really of blue blood (the idea of captain’s blood doesn’t quite work at
the dénouement),
you get the feeling that clever Buttercup might actually steer a
straighter course on the bridge than him. But this was ‘Poor little
Buttercup’, sung with such a touchingly muted (possibly untrained?) male
alto it melted you there and then. Not just another super
performance; but a deceptively shrewd one too. Yet you can’t say that these
had the monopoly on poignancy. For nothing matched up to Alan
Richardson’s quite extraordinary performance as the
about-to-be-wed-but-actually-in-love-with- the-jack-tar, Josephine.
Exquisitely demure, so sweet and pretty and honest, desirably tactile,
the ultimate little-boy-(or –girl)-lost, As a character, Josephine has
lots of balls, finding ways to escape the clutches of the famously dire
Sir Joseph Porter (David McKechnie, who sang it in the original and the
deftness of whose scrupulously rehearsed moves, pipe in hand or no,
almost outshone the lot of them). Time and again, it was the tiny
touches in Regan’s staging that tickled one’s fancy, as well as the
increasingly stylish, to the point set pieces from an adroit and clever
crew. Neil Moors won our attention
early on with some nice turns as the about-to-be-demoted/humiliated
skipper (‘I am the Captain of the Pinafore’, with admirably butch
chorus, certainly one of the evening’s hits). Aidan Crowley was fun as
the manipulative, rather nasty Dick Deadeye, though his witless
gesturing looks as amateurish as his speaking was excellent. There were
times, one must admit, when it was difficult to decide if this show was
an instance of outstanding amateur or genuine professional. They did
everything so well, and yet the concept slightly lacked beef.
That Sasha Regan came to this
idea, as she tells us in a rather wonderful preface in the programme,
from playing boy roles and boy leads herself in
This bizarre, intoxicating
jamboree keeps on the road very impressively, with individuals in the
ensemble given quite distinct roles, even if they where they fall back
on hack repeat gestures they might usefully (like dirty Dick) have been
tweaked directorially for more variety. Agile they certainly were. At
least half the ensemble was in the original last autumn. It shows.
Number after number was – dancewise – spot on.
There was no tinpot piped
orchestra. The person providing the dance was the pianist, who supplied
all the goods with splendid polish without ever overbearing. Michael
England is credited as Music Supervisor and Richard Bates as Musical
Director, so maybe one of them put the cast through its singing paces
onstage and one plays; or they elegantly and idiomatically alternate. The problem for me is that
very idiom. Catchy though it is, Pinafore may not be Gilbert’s
best script, yet the keyboard as always (with opera too) reveals almost
more than an orchestra does. Time and again one is, or I am,
disappointed – let down - by the paucity of Sullivan’s musical ideas
(remember, he was a pretty fine classical composer in other mode); the
shallowness of his bass line; the wetness of a musical style that goes
little further than his predecessors, Barnett and Balfe. It doesn’t make
for dramatic power; it makes for triteness. When one thinks of composers
like Julius Benedict, a Weber pupil, who was working in England at the
time, or MacFarren, or Sterndale Bennett, one wonders what they might
have done with the material; arguably Sullivan, bar those few thumping,
inimitable good tunes, doesn’t stand up that well. But then that is what
Sullivan fans the world over would probably tell you is its charm: the
simplicity, the innocent charm, the plinky-plonk cheerfulness, and
doubtless the memorability of the vocal line (‘Three little girls from
school’, ‘I am the very model of a modern major-general’, etc.). But the
point is made very well in the film Topsy-Turvy: it was not, in
essence, the music Sullivan wanted to be writing; more the music Gilbert
(Jim Broadbent) and Richard D’Oyly-Carte – or a good income - wanted him
to. Perhaps it doesn’t matter a
hoot here. The cast sang with such aplomb - most of them very good
voices, ever bit as spirited as their acting. In its own way, it was an
(aptly) b(u)oyant, generally scintillating
show. All those sexy aunts…..pheeouw! The controlled sequence in which
they all revert, donning uniform at the end to being naval ratings once
more (was this only a sex-starved chaps’ dream?) – a mirror image, one
realises, of their initial unclothing which one only partly understood
at the time - supplied one of the most moving touches among many fine
details dotted around. With those few reservations, super acting, super
show. Roderic Dunnett
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who
was the original Hebe in the original 2013 
umpteen
school plays, rather feistily one would guess. She brings that same
commitment to this show, so that while odd moments threaten bathos, it
never actually befalls.