Added layers sink timeless classic
The wig department at the Stratford Festival is one of the best in the country, so when a character takes off his hat to reveal a stringy, brassy blond monstrosity that’s at once too long and too small — it’s clearly making a statement.
And in HMS Pinafore, that statement leans in the direction of another unreasonably successful politician whose rise in power (owed to family money and station) flies in the face of his obvious incompetence.
The connection between Sir Joseph Porter, leader of the British Royal Navy in Gilbert and Sullivan’s famous 1878 Savoy opera HMS Pinafore and the current president of the United States is a clear and smart one to make in a production almost 140 years later.
It also makes lyrics in Porter’s song “When I Was a Lad” jump off the stage and into Washington Post headlines, such as “I always voted at my party’s call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all/ I thought so little, they rewarded me by making me the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!”— especially when performed so amusingly obliviously by Laurie Murdoch, who, in this production swaps out the Queen for “the King’s Navy.”
That complies with the framing device director Lezlie Wade has added that sets the operetta as a show-within-a-show, with the action unfolding in 1918, while King George V was ruling over Britain.
And that begins to show this production’s weaknesses. Wade has chosen to place this HMS Pinafore as a New Year’s Eve performance taking place in a temporary hospital during the First World War, featuring nurses, doctors, patients and partygoers as the characters, to inject some levity and celebration into their lives.
But because that setup isn’t completely clear, and because it’s used only as bookends to an otherwise straightforward presentation, the double reality isn’t present for the viewer and adds no deeper context to the material.
Murdoch’s performance, and Porter’s obvious similarities to modern politics, would be just as funny and insightful without it. Perhaps more so, since the added layer of1918 global politics wouldn’t muddy it up.
The plot follows Captain Corcoran (Steve Ross) who commands the Pinafore as he tries to marry his daughter Josephine (Jennifer Rider-Shaw) to Sir Joseph Porter to raise their social class.
But Josephine has fallen in love with the lowly but intelligent sailor Ralph Rackstraw (Mark Uhre) and plans to elope — until Little Buttercup (Lisa Horner), a bumboat woman (who sells wares and treats to sailors) reveals a secret that puts a final twist on the love triangle, which — no spoilers — demands a very strong suspension of disbelief.
The entire cast and ensemble carry Arthur Sullivan’s music ably, and deliver W.S. Gilbert’s wry sense of humour, but get overwhelmed by busy stage business that overstuffs the production with gags that don’t quite land — the sound of a cat screeching when a character careens offstage, characters getting seasick out of nowhere and a preoccupation with characters spying on each other through two swinging doors.
And forced attempts to turn the ship’s most ornery sailor, Dick Deadeye (Brad Rudy), into a fool also somehow have the opposite effect.
An amateur photographer, his photos of Josephine and Ralph eventually reveal to Captain Corcoran their elopement plan. But the first time you get a glimpse of Dick’s hobby he’s in the ship’s bowels, steam escaping the machinery and the red light of the dark room casting a sinister mood on the space.
With candid photos of Josephine hanging along a clothesline as they develop, Dick looks like nothing other than a serial killer or if Freddy Krueger took a side job as a deckhand. It’s a needless, jarring image.
HMS Pinafore does let its two young lovers take the spotlight, with Uhre making his Stratford debut this season and Jennifer Rider-Shaw breaking out of the ensemble in her seventh season.
So to say that this production of HMS Pinafore never lives up to its potential isn’t fair — let’s say, hardly ever.
Director Lezlie Wade places this production as a New Year’s Eve performance in a hospital during the First World War