Sasha Regan’s All Male H.M.S. Pinafore was performed at Hackney Empire, London before heading off on tour. Picture: Roy Tan
Sasha Regan’s All Male H.M.S. Pinafore was reviewed at the Hackney Empire, London, before beginning a tour on 3 March.
The Savoy opera that secured the international success of Gilbert & Sullivan following its maiden voyage in 1878, H.M.S. Pinafore (or The Lass That Loved a Sailor) tells the story of lowly seaman Ralph Rackstraw, whose mutual love for Josephine (the daughter of the ship’s captain) is precluded by their differing social status. Josephine is intended for the more befitting First Lord of the Admiralty, The Rt Hon Sir Joseph Porter, KCB. This production of H.M.S. Pinafore, inspired in part by Union Theatre artistic director Sasha Regan’s childhood experiences of performing Gilbert & Sullivan at single-sex school, follows hot on the heels of the success of her all-male The Pirates of Penzance, which toured Australia in 2012.
Led by Keith Jack as Ralph, Neil Moors as Captain Cocoran, David McKechnie as Sir Joseph Porter, Alan Richardson as Josephine, Alex Weatherhill as Buttercup, Richard Russell Edwards as Hebe, and Aidan Crowley as the superbly acted Dick Deadeye, members of the 16-strong cast excel themselves as they breathe new life into one of Gilbert & Sullivan’s enduring classics. The production’s all-male context lends much dramatic irony to moments such as Buttercup’s attempt to comfort the Captain with the line ‘Fear not, I am a mother’, to say nothing of Sir Joseph Porter’s ubiquitous cortège of ‘his sisters and his cousins and his aunts’.
The ‘female’ leads particularly impress with their vocal elasticity: both Weatherhill and show-stealer Richardson rise to the occasion admirably. Likewise, several performers demonstrate remarkable versatility in immediately switching character from burly sailors to delicate maidens at the drop of a pair of blue shorts. While the falsetto singing generally lacks the purity of the female voice as well as the power in the lower register, it adds a distinctive homogeneity to the ensemble that would have been absent from a mixed-voice chorus.
Transposing the operetta’s original naval setting to the hold of a Second World War battleship (possibly a nod to the emergent tradition of all-male performances in Prisoner of War camps during that conflict) requires a little imagination to be exercised in sequences that are evidently intended to take place above deck. The change of time and location notwithstanding, the production does not otherwise partake of the tradition of updating Gilbert & Sullivan operetta through the interpolation of topical references, arguably missing a valuable opportunity given H.M.S. Pinafore’s cutting satire of British social hierarchy.
Some of the biggest laughs are reserved for Lizzi Gee’s imaginative choreography, which is witty without being outlandish and extends the humour of Gilbert’s farcical plot effectively, with highlights including synchronised skipping and other gymnastics in ‘I Am the Captain of the Pinafore’. While the musical direction is strong, it is a pity that the accompaniment throughout the show is provided only by electric piano, which does not always capture the full extent of the ebullience of Sullivan’s music in its orchestral scoring.
Anybody who might cringe at the thought of shrill falsetto voices, or of Gilbert & Sullivan being presented with an all-male cast, should be encouraged to approach this production with an open mind: played sensitively throughout, Sasha Regan’s All Male H.M.S. Pinafore strikes a judicious balance between comedy and sincerity.
Christopher Wiley
* Following its Off-West End run at the Hackney Empire, the production sets sail on a two-month tour of the UK on 3 March, stopping successively at Eastbourne, Nottingham, Croydon, Exeter, Buxton, Warwick, Guildford, and Winchester.
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