Music Review: Pirates! The Penzance Musical – Original Broadway Cast Recording

Pirates! The Penzance Musical Original Broadway Cast Recording, now available via streaming and digital formats. The CD edition is released on 14 November 2026 (Center Stage Records).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The opening jazz number transports us to a joint-jumping New Orleans in this recording of ‘Pirates! The Penzance Musical’. This is a place where General Stanley’s daughters don’t ‘climb over rocky mountains’, but ‘sashay through the old French quarter’.

The New York-based Roundabout Theatre Company reimagines classics and brings them to new audiences. This year, they sprinkled their Broadway magic on the Gilbert and Sullivan classic The Pirates of Penzance. The plot is the same as the original, but with some extra topsy-turvy-ness involving a young General Stanley fathering a daughter in every port and being responsible for the death of the Pirate King’s father.

Rupert Holmes and Joseph Joubert’s clever settings sound as if the songs have always had a jazz lilt, a Caribbean swing and a Broadway sheen. They meld amazingly well with the numbers that are sung straight, such as ‘Here’s a first-rate opportunity’.

This is as much a testament to Sullivan’s originals as to Holmes and Joubert’s genius for arranging. It really sounds like a true collaboration. Ramin Karimloo’s ‘I Am the Pirate King’ morphs joyously into a calypso. Jinkx Monsoon’s ‘When Fred’ric was a little lad’ is a sultry vamp. Samatha Williams’ ‘Poor Wand’ring One’ is sung as a jazz classic, with chesty, expressive ‘ahs’ in the ‘coloratura’ section.

Songs liberally borrowed from other G&S shows sit well within the album. ‘We sail the Ocean Blue’, from HMS Pinafore, is transformed into a swinging blues number. Monsoon’s Ruth sings ‘Alone, and yet alive’ from The Mikado with big band panache. David Hyde Pierce is Major General Stanley and also sings the ‘Nightmare Song’ from Iolanthe. With his cut-glass English accent and stiff upper lip, he is certainly deserving of this extra patter song.

Joubert and Daryl Waters’ orchestrations flow easily from classic G&S to jazz and calypso. The orchestra is fabulous, the strings are lush, the brass rocks and the banjo adds a whole new dimension to ‘A Paradox’. The terrific choruses are given some American pizzazz with more than a gentle nod to the Broadway greats.

Gilbert was a sharp political satirist, and Holmes’ dialogue brings the satire up to date, particularly in the final chorus, changed from ‘For he is an Englishman’ to ‘We’re All From Some Place Else’.

This is a rollicking fusion of New Orleans jazz, caribbean rhythms and beloved Gilbert and Sullivan tunes. It will make toes tap and hips sway, and hopefully help a whole new generation discover the joy that is Gilbert and Sullivan.

Effie Gray