Quintessence Theatre presents Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance

I commend Burns for bucking the usual programming trend and slotting Penzance in the traditional “Christmas” season spot. Surely it’s a more worthwhile endeavor than the dozens of Dickens adaptations and banal holiday musicals currently in circulation.

Yet the staging on view at the Sedgwick Theater often feels as flat as the cardboard cutouts that dominate Brian Sidney Bembridge’s scenic design. Even removed from its Victorian context by more than a century, Penzance remains effortlessly funny. Neither Burns nor the hard-working cast—in some cases, too hard-working—seem to trust the material.

Hijinks and happy endings

On its face, Penzance chronicles the misadventures of Frederic (Brandon Walters), a noble lad who, as a tot, found himself inadvertently indentured to a band of hapless pirates, led by the swaggering but buffoonish Pirate King (Trevor Martin). On his 21st birthday, he endeavors to leave his life of crime behind and marry Mabel (Kamaluonālani Matthias), a daughter of Major-General Stanley (Christopher Patrick Mullen). Needless to say, hijinks ensue on the road to a happy ending.

Gilbert and Sullivan used their frothy comedy to parody their era’s class system, presenting the aristocracy as foolish, law enforcement as inept, and outlaws as more noble and moral than their courtly counterparts. Skewering these tropes certainly still holds resonance for the audiences of today.

Cheap shots and caricatures

Most of the Quintessence company either goose the comedy so broadly that it loses its sharpness (Martin, as well as Christina Stroup, as Frederic’s nanny Ruth) or underplay it to the point of banality (Mullen’s ambivalent Major-General). Walters has appealing moments as Frederic, but too often he comes across merely as petulant.

Burns takes cheap shots at the current occupant of the Oval Office, both in an added verse to “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” and in a sequence involving an ensemble member donning a Trump Halloween mask. These additions serve no purpose except to easily titillate a liberal audience. Stronger points could be made by tying the politics of Gilbert and Sullivan’s time, deeply embedded in the libretto and music, to our current moment.

Other choices rankle in different ways, like having half of Major-General Stanley’s retinue of daughters portrayed by male-presenting actors—some with facial hair—who burlesque femininity in a grotesque and overstated manner. It was uncomfortable to watch the predominantly older, straight audience snicker at these caricatures, but such a reaction underlined the homophobic and misogynistic undertones of the choice.

Though far too young for Ruth, Stroup at least supplies a voice worth remembering, her sultry alto wrapping itself around “When Frederic Was a Little Lad” memorably. Matthias copes with Mabel’s high tessitura, though her soprano has an unfortunately tinny tone. The men fare less well, and the best that can be said for Mullen’s “Model of a Modern Major-General” is that he gets through it.

Savoy score pleasures

Risa Ando’s costumes look as if rented from a high school, and Ian Rose’s fight direction fails either to quicken the pulse or provide a dose of comedic tomfoolery. The decision to portray the Sergeant of Police (Liam Gerard) and his officers as bumbling Keystone Kops feels as though directly lifted from Wilford Leach’s 1980 production for the New York Shakespeare Festival, which is available on film.

The pleasures of a Savoy score are sui generis, and the four-person band handling the orchestral demands deserves praise for doing yeoman’s work. At the end of the day, though, this seafaring adventure seems unfortunately unmoored.