About a week ago, I did something funny. I went to a Sing-along concert of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore.
It convinced me that an awful lot of people have been in the show at some point in their lives, because many audience members brought dog-eared copies of the libretto — and all of them wore goofy grins on their faces for an hour and a half.
The leads were professionals, or quasi professionals. They dressed in costumes and affected English accents in their speaking roles on a raised platform where the orchestra was. It was nice that they were so professional, but I actually thought it was fun to read how different from performing their daily lives were.
According to the program notes, Thom Kenney (playing our hero Ralph Rackstraw) “has performed in musicals, operas and plays and is a member of the Tanglewood Chorus. He earned an MBA at Notre Dame and was deployed to Afghanistan.”
Beverly St Clair (Cousin Hebe) is a psychiatrist.
Ken Martin (HMS Pinafore’s Captain Corcoran) is a management consultant.
Conductor Alan Yost “is a percussionist and a research aircraft pilot and IT specialist with the US Department of Transportation. His true passion is conducting.”
The story in a nutshell: The captain’s daughter falls for a lowly “tar” (sailor) and plans to elope rather than marry the “ruler of the Queen’s Nav-ee,” the clueless Sir Joseph. The plot is discovered and Rackstraw ordered to a dungeon, when Buttercup, who comes on board periodically to sell notions and who has been hinting darkly about a desperate secret, announces that she was once nurse to Captain Corcoran and Ralph Rackstraw simultaneously and “mixed those babies up.”
So their social positions being suddenly switched, it’s OK for the new Captain Rackstraw to marry beneath him. Corcoran, now a lowly tar, decides to marry Buttercup, and no one seems to notice that she must be nearly 60 to his 40 (we are talking Gilbert & Sullivan, after all).
The young woman bouncing enthusiastically in the seat next to me had delightful hand gestures for every phrase she sang.
And did I mention that I sang the role of Sir Joseph’s Cousin Hebe when I was in junior high, which was long enough ago that television actress Tyne Daly, best known for talking tough on cop shows, played the ingenue.
Photo: borrowed from the Pittsburgh Savoyards by way of showbiz.com
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