Year:  1983
Rating: 7.5

---

I am a Pirate King
And it is, it is a glorious thing to be the Pirate King.

Good old Gilbert and Sullivan. In perhaps yet another sign of encroaching age on my part a few years back G&S started sounding really good to me and I began listening to their three major comic operettas on occasion. My father had been a big fan and Sunday mornings were usually filled with the sounds of Beethoven and Mozart or if he was in the mood musicals such as My Fair Lady, Oklahoma and South Pacific and G&S records from the D'Oyly Carte company (Richard D'Oyly Carte was their producer). Even back then it must have sunk in because when I began listening to them again it all sounded very familiar.


G&S wrote 14 operettas before they tired of one another and broke up and like the Beatles nothing they did afterwards was as good. Of the 14 productions three are still very popular today - The H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. In 1980 the famous theater impresario Joseph Papp put on a Broadway production of Pirates of Penzance that was a big hit. It starred Kevin Kline, Linda Ronstadt, George Rose, Rex Smith and Tony Azito. In 1983 the cast moved to Hollywood and made a film version of the theatrical production. The film added Angela Lansbury.


Papp and director Wilford Leach added a lot of pizzazz and not surprisingly given the cast gave the music a little more of a pop sound. Not disco or rock pop but something closer to the big Broadway sound of a Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Webber. The film has a lot of energy, color, charm and eye-catching artificial sets. Everybody does a fine job with Kline as the Pirate King being very physical and amusing, Ronstadt sweet, Angela Lansbury tart and Rex Smith handsome as the apprentice Pirate. The stand-outs though are George Rose as General Stanley who gives a dazzling performance of the light-speed patter of "I am the very model of a modern Major-General" and Azito as the Sergeant Constable is brilliant and made of rubber it seems. Having heard this a number of times it was great to see it visually, have the advantage of subtitles and get the dialogue between songs. Now I get it!