**½
PINAFORE! Celebration Theatre production
Belva Records

Seldom is an L.A. cast album released while the show is still playing, but that's the case with "Pinafore!," which opened in September at the Celebration Theatre and has been extended several times.

Before listening to the "Pinafore!" CD, I glanced at the liner notes for a recording of the original "H.M.S. Pinafore." The operetta was the subject of "a spate of heavily adapted" American versions in its early years, I learned, but more recently, it "has proved more immune than other Gilbert and Sullivan collaborations to modernizing trends."

Well, that was then and this is now. "Pinafore!" adapter and director Mark Savage kept most of the Sullivan score and even most of the titles of the individual songs, but he radically changed most of Gilbert's lyrics and character names.

The ship in this version is part of the "separate but equal" gay navy set up in response to the failed "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The captain's son is a transvestite who has successfully convinced his supposedly straight lover that he is a she. Yet the captain wants to marry his offspring off to Sen. Barney Crank of Maryland, the admiral of the gay navy.

Savage aims his darts at politically correct liberals instead of the usual right-wing targets of gay satires. Liberals are automatically accorded the same privileges in the gay navy that Englishmen were in the original, thereby making them fair game for Savage's pen. In addition to suggesting that one ostensibly straight character is really gay, Savage also suggests the opposite about another character--which flies in the face of what happens in most dramatizations of gay issues.

On the other hand, this probably isn't a show for people with no interest in gay culture--or indeed, with no interest in Gilbert and Sullivan. Both groups may well not understand half of the jokes.

The recording comes with a complete text of the lyrics, which makes joke-appreciation even easier than it is in the theater. And it preserves the multi-octave-spanning performance of R. Christofer Sands as the transvestite, plus the performances of the amiable Michael Gregory as the captain and Debra Lane as the secretly troubled Bitter Butterball (as opposed to the original's Buttercup), and the occasionally forced sounds of Christopher Hall as Dick Dockstrap (as opposed to the original's Ralph Rackstraw). Ron Snyder is the superb musical director.

By Chris Curcio
BBH Chief Theater Critic
http://www.broadwaysbiggesthits.com/


"PINAFORE"
Original Los Angeles Cast
Belva Records (BVR002)

A twisted but very funny gay version of Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore" called "Pinafore" recently ran successfully in Los Angeles. A cast recording of it has just been released. Adapted and directed by Mark Savage, the show uses the original score faithfully but the non-traditional, gender-bending casting and the contemporary interpolation of gay plot twists about man-loving sailors and their lust filled exploits with charming drag maidens is quite clever. In this version, the Pinafore is the flagship of the new gay Navy and is docked in Palm Springs. When the Commander arrives with drag queens as new crew members, the ship goes topsy-turvy with shenanigans. The carryings on of these gay sailors and their relationships with the transvestites is spiked with merriment. The cast is talented and obviously has fun with the source material and enjoys the cavorting allowed by the tongue-in-cheek humor. Musically, the cast sounds good in the tricky music.

Grade: A-

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/
-- Jonathan Frank

In the "I can't believe what I'm hearing" department, a recording of Mark Savage's Los Angeles production of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore has hit the shelves. The show, which was a huge success at the Celebration Theatre in Los Angeles (that the theatre was the original home of Naked Boys Singing will give you some idea of what to expect), reset the operetta in the new Gay Navy as instituted by President Al Gore ("Don"t Ask/Don't Tell" was a disaster, so he's going for "Separate But Equal") headed by the ultra-PC Senator Barney Crank. The ship, currently docked in Palm Springs, is helmed by Captain Corkinit, whose cross-dressing son Joseph/Josephine, is being pursued by both Senator Crank and Dick Dockstrap, the only heterosexual on the ship. Trust me; the phrase "a gay romp" does not begin to do this show justice.

As one who has been forced to listen to innumerable parodies in every level of taste, poor or otherwise, I was thrilled to discover that this show is one of the better-written examples of the genre. The lyrics are remarkably sharp. At their "worst," they display what actors come up with backstage to break the tedium of an extended run (for example: Poor Little Bitter Butterball's lament, in which she urges the sailors to buy as "the white party's looming/and business is booming/so come, of your Butterball buy" or the Captain's "What Never/Hardly Ever" number, in which he states he "never [did] it with my crew" to the predictable gag). At their best, such as in Senator Crank's "When I Was A Lad," in which he describes his evolution as the poster child for all things PC, they show a remarkable wit and social commentary that rival William Gilbert's original versions.

The voices range from what can charitably be called "less than Broadway caliber" (especially in regards to some of the ensemble numbers) to one of the main reasons to purchase this album, R. Christofer Sand's (Joseph/Josephine) whose soaring counter tenor is light and highly listenable. While this is not necessarily an album that will appeal to all listeners, lovers of this particular brand of humor (and you know who you are!) will find it utterly hysterical and worth getting.

Pinafore (Original Cast)
Book and Score Adapted by Mark Savage from W.S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan
Staring Debra Lane, Wilson Raiser, Christopher Hall, Michael Gregory, R. Christofer Sands and David Gillam Fuller

A “Pinafore” about an all-gay U.S. Navy? Why not? For a hundred and twenty-five years people have been adapting, converting, altering, adjusting and generally using Gilbert and Sullivan’s irresistible comic confection H.M.S. Pinafore for their own purposes. Some have changed the original just to avoid copyright problems. Some have changed it out of a strange idea that it had become dated. It would be hard to imagine any adaptation succeeding, however, without being based on a deeply felt appreciation for the original. Appreciation is the key to the success of this one – and succeed it does. Handsomely!

This high camp adaptation of what was a high camp original builds on the honorable tradition of Messrs Gilbert and Sullivan to use the comic opera format to get away with only thinly disguised commentary on the issues of the day and the foibles of society.

This “Pinafore” is bannered “A Sexy, Saucy, Ship Shape New Musical.” It is set in the mythical presidency of Al Gore at a time when the failed “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy of the Clinton years has been supplanted by a segregation of the armed services by sexual preference. The Navy is now all gay and the Commander of the Navy is none other than Senator Barney Crank of Maryland who is coming to claim in marriage the child of the Captain of the good ship Pinafore. That child is a drag queen who happens to be loved by a sailor in that ship’s crew – a young man who not only has the misfortune of being the only heterosexual left in the new gay navy, he also is unaware of the fact that the “girl” he loves is, in fact, a boy.

Just as the plot of the original was a simple structure on which Gilbert hung fabulously witty baubles emphasized by the earnestness of Sullivan’s sumptuous score, so adaptor Mark Savage drapes his barbs on the same simple structure, changing it only enough to accommodate his concept. Thus whole choruses and verses stand unchanged except by context: this show gives entirely new meaning to Gilbert’s “Gaily Tripping.” Occasionally he over does it. “Our commander Barney Cranks a painfully P.C. dude / But we really owe him thanks / ‘cause we love his taste in seafood!” is too much of a stretch. But there are times when he comes up with an improvement in the wit of the original. Surely that is the case with the change of “my proffered love despised, rejected / No, no, its not to be expected” to the much more felicitous “My offered love she tosses from her / No, not, its much to big a bummer!”

This recording was made four months into the show’s apparently successful run in Los Angeles by which time the cast had enough experience performing the material before an audience to know how to not only sing the songs but sell the bits. It is a fine capturing of what must be a fun show. It probably isn’t something to be listened to frequently but it is one heck of a fun single listen.

by Brad Hathaway, Online Broadway Correspondent
broadway@musicalstages.co.uk
http://www.musicalstages.co.uk/reviews/cd/pinafore_cdreview.htm