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AMERICAN CINEMA PAPERS
1982 |
PIRATES DUST OFF
YOUR PARROTS by Harlan Kennedy PIRATES: We propose to
marry your daughters..! MAJOR-GENERAL:,,,Do you mean to say that you would deliberately
rob me of these, the sole remaining props of my old age, and leave me to go
through the remainder of my life unfriended,
unprotected and alone? PIRATES: Yes, that's
the idea. Ahoy and Avast there
– It's 1982 and suddenly, as if a centenary alarm clock has gone off, Gilbert and
Sullivan mania is about to bust out all over the
English-speaking world. One hundred years ago last October, the D'Oyly Carte Light Opera Company was founded by Sir
Richard D'Oyly C. to present the operas of G and S
in a permanent home – London's Savoy Theater – and with a permanent troupe
of sturdy-tonsilled singing-actors. A century later three
screen versions of The Pirates of Penzance are
being recorded – two for the large screen, one for the small – and buccaneers
are buck-and-winging, and policemen tarantara-ing,
over soundstages as far-flung as Australia and England. Just when a cultural
phenomenon seems to have fallen into dateless desuetude, it pops up again
through the trap-doors of history. In recent
years the Victorian writer-composer duo scarcely had two memorable stage
productions to rub together in the Western world. And even the D'Oyly Carte company itself, standards and attendances
falling in unison after a century of business-on-the boards, finally
announced its fold-up. But now Sir William Gilbert (1836-1911)
and Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) will
doubtless be hornpiping in their graves at the
sudden-and-mighty resurgence of their works from a Sargasso Sea of
semi-neglect. Makers of daft ditties and deft doggerel, G and S were mighty
wits with words-and-music and could justly top the list as founder-fathers of
the Broadway and Hollywood musical. They gave us basic, wacky plots of
romances thwarted and misunderstandings multiplying; tunes spooned brightly
in with scant fuss over transitional recitative; big bold four-square brassy rhythms; and a cast of
dozens falling over themselves to hew out a happy ending before curtainfall. The new lease on life
for G and S began in July 1980 when entrepreneur Joseph Papp brought
his off-Broadway success, Pirates of Penzance, to the Great White Way and
thereby proved that the smash-hit backstage modernisms of Chorus Line had
nothing on an empurpled Nineteenth Century confection of orphans,
buccaneers, Major-Generals, and coloratura lovebirds. A policeman's
lot may not be a happy one, but a stage producer's certainly is when he
strikes culture-shock sparks from the least expected source. Papp's production is now
going before the cameras at Britain's Shepperton
Studios, with Linda Ronstadt, Kevin Kline (soon to
be "Sophie's Choice"), and most of the original
B'way cast reprising their stentorian trills, plus
Angela Lansbury drafted in to beef up the cast as
nurse-maid Ruth. A quick peek-in reveals a chorus of brigands swarming over a
gnarled and monumental pirate galleon floating in a water-filled soundstage,
jointly captained by Papp himself (executive
producing), director Wilford Leach, and
cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, fresh from
recording other, more sandblown brigands in Raiders
of the Lost Ark. It's only poetic – or piratic – justice that America should be bringing Gilbert and
Sullivan to England in the wake of centenary time. For
the world premiere of The Pirates of Penzance on
New Year's Eve 1879 took place not in London but in the U.S.: at the Fifth
Avenue Theatre, New York City. G and S – themselves plagued by pirates of a
more plagiaristic kind, plundering tunes not doubloons – chose to unveil
their most popular opera at the Fifth Avenue in order to secure the American
copyright. And although a tiny simultaneous opening-night took place in
Devon, England, the opera did not reach Britain's capital until April 1880. While the rafters of Shepperton Studios echo to Pirate's briny
ensembles and the tongue-twisting iambics of the Major-General's famous
patter song, Twickenham Studios across the river
Thames present the very model of a modern major mission to immortalize all
twelve of Gilbert and Sullivan's
original D'Oyly Carte stage productions for television.
The deus praesens hovering above this TV
project is the film company Brent Walker, and the operas are being
videotaped with the dual aim of transmission on TV and later marketing as
cassettes. The Pirates of Penzance is only one of the G and
S works thus tripping the light mellifluous with their richly oddball casts
of English opera singers and all-sorts entertainers. William Conrad, the
incredible hulk of Cannon,
guest-stars in The Mikado; explosive-jowled
British comic Frankie Howerd is Sir Joseph Porter
in H.M.S. Pinafore; and
American cabaret star Peter Allen essays the juvenile lead in Pirates. Third and not least of
the current assaults on these crenelated follies
of Victorian musicianship is The Pirate Movie. Myriad millions of
Australian dollars are fluttering around this Sydney-based movie adaptation,
directed by Ken Annakin, which is "loosely
based" on The Pirates of Penzance. Kristy
McNichol and Christopher Atkins play the leads, a
modern duo of lovers who are fantasy-whisked into the G and S world by that
never-fail device, a dream sequence, and there spend the rest of the film. Five of the opera's
original songs are kept – though with modern arrangements and some revamped
lyrics – and six new ones have been added. Distributors 20th Century-Fox
hope to crack a bottle of champagne over this movie-galleon in the summer;
Joseph Papp's pirates, flying the Universal flag,
will follow at Christmas time. So dust off your cutlasses, adjust your
parrots, and dry-clean your skull and cross-bones – it's going to be a busy
buccaneering year. COURTESY T.P. MOVIE NEWS. THIS ARTICLE APPEARED
IN THE MARCH–APRIL 1982 ISSUE OF FILM COMMENT. ©HARLAN
KENNEDY. All rights reserved. |
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