‘Pinafore’ sets sail with an assured hand
Lamplighters returns to the spirited Gilbert and Sullivan classic
It’s summer in the Bay Area, and a traveling theatrical troupe is touring with a musical satire about class, privilege and the opportunities showered upon those already born into wealth. No, we’re not talking about the San Francisco Mime Troupe but another venerable local theatrical institution — Lamplighters Music Theatre. The satire in question is “H.M.S. Pinafore,” the 1878 comic opera by librettist William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, and Lamplighters’ tour stops this weekend at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the next weekend at Livermore’s Bankhead Theater. Lamplighters occasionally produces other musicals, such as Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” earlier this year, but for the 67 years since its founding it’s been chiefly devoted to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. “Pinafore” is one of a few favorites in particularly heavy rotation, produced by Lamplighters every four years or so (not including the occasional sing-along). There’s a good reason for that. “Pinafore” is packed with some of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most delightful ditties, from “I’m Called Little Buttercup” to “I Am the Monarch of the Sea/When I Was a Lad” and the absurdly stirring refrain “For He is an Englishman.” Sullivan’s music was seldom sprightlier, and Gilbert’s witty lyrics and deucedly clever story made for a winning combination. For the most part, the plot is unusually simple for one of the duo’s works. The daughter of the ship’s captain, born to privilege, is in love with a humble sailor in the crew, but the captain has arranged her marriage to the First Lord of the Admiralty. A whole lot of playful but incisive musings on social classes separated by an accident of birth ensue. Lamplighters’ production is almost aggressively traditional, boasting new men’s costumes this year for the seamen to increase the historical accuracy. (The costume design is by Judy Jackson.) The show involves far fewer doublecast roles than usual for the company, just the two young lovers. Ellen Leslie (rotating with Jennifer Mitchell) is a sparkling Josephine, the captain’s daughter, by turns lovelorn, impish and imperious as she wavers between her love and her attachment to comfort and position. Patrick Hagen (alternating with Jackson Beaman) is a melancholy, moping Ralph Rackstraw, the lovesick sailor. Both sing beautifully, as does the cast as a whole, ably accompanied by the full orchestra conducted by music director Baker Peeples. The comedy is certainly emphasized in director Ellen Brooks’ staging, but ultimately the music is the real star of the show. Michael Grammer is sweetvoiced and stolid as the dignified Captain Corcoran, and Sonia Gariaeff displays impish charm as peddler Little Buttercup. William Neely brings a fairly strong baritone but not much personality to Dick Deadeye, the ornery sailor who’s reviled even when he’s just saying what everybody else just said mere moments ago. F. Lawrence Ewing is wonderfully entertaining as foolish lifelong bureaucrat Sir Joseph Porter, now “the ruler of the Queen’s Navy.” He’s accompanied by a large retinue of “his sisters and his cousins and his aunts,” comprising the women’s chorus as the sailors do the men’s, and Elana Cowen is relentlessly cheery as overenthusiastic lead cousin Hebe. Some of these performers, notably Ewing and Garaieff, have played these roles for the company several times before (on this same handsome multilevel set of a ship’s deck by Peter Crompton), and it shows. Lamplighters returns to “Pinafore” with an assurance and practiced skill, and most of all with a palpable love of the material.