From its humble beginnings playing to 50 people under a railway arch in Southwark, The Pirates are preparing for their voyage across the sea. Ahoy boys!
Sasha's All-Male Pirates started a 4-week run at The Union Theatre back in 2009. The 50-seater venue she established back in 1997, set under a railway arch in Southwark, had been growing from strength to strength. Pirates received rave reviews "pure joy," "an irresistible delight," "as brilliant and heretical as Matthew Bourne's vision of Swan Lake."
In the spring of 2010 the production moved to the oldest surviving music hall in the world, the magnificent 300-seater Wilton's Music Hall where it ran to full houses for six weeks. Suddenly there was a huge amount of interest in this innovative production. We were invited, off the back of Wiltons, to play the 900-seater Rose Theatre in Kingston for a fortnight.
Little did we know that in the audience were representatives from Australia and The United States. Following a lot of to-ing and fro-ing Pirates hit Hackney Empire for a week at the end of September 2012 before embarking on a national tour of Australia playing Canberra, Mount Gambier, Renmark, Perth, Wollongong, selling out in Adelaide and Cate Blanchett's Sydney Theatre, where it played the main house for three-weeks. The feedback was fantastic.
The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty, was first produced at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York on 31 December, 1879, and, also, for copyright purposes one performance was given in England on the previous day at the Royal Bijou Theatre, Paignton. The first performance in London, however, was not until 3 April, 1880, when it was produced at the Opera Comique. Both Gilbert and Sullivan incorporated a small amount of words and music in this opera from their first joint production of 1871, Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old. The music of Thespis, however, was never published. When Sullivan started to compose the music for The Pirates he commenced in the middle of Act II, but had not proceeded far before he was compelled to leave for America with Gilbert to stop the pirating of H.M.S. Pinafore; therefore, with the exception of that portion which he had composed in England Sullivan wrote the whole of the score of The Pirates of Penzance at his hotel in New York.
"I think it will be a great success", he wrote home to his Mother, "for it is exquisitely funny, and the music is strikingly tuneful and catching." The following is an extract from another of Sullivan's letters in which he gives his impressions of The Pirates. "The libretto", he says, "is ingenious, clever, wonderfully funny in parts, and sometimes brilliant in dialogue, beautifully written for music, as is all Gilbert does, and all the action and business perfect. The music is infinitely superior in every way to Pinafore — 'tunier' and more developed, of a higher class altogether. I think in time it will be more popular".
The music of the opera is as Sullivan described it, "strikingly tuneful and catching." On its first production in London the opera ran for over 360 performances.
'The lovable spirit of D'Oyly Carte is everywhere ... how on earth does a man sing such accurate coloratura, so high with so little apparent effort ... the evening is full of delights'
'As brilliant and heretical as Matthew Bourne's vision of Swan Lake ... It hits that perfect tone between silliness and sentimentality that this delightful operetta warrants. Pure joy'
'It is an object lesson in the art of successful G&S: don't monkey around with the inherent silliness; instead take it seriously but not earnestly ... Immensely charming.'
'A coup ... the staging is ebullient and charming, choreography is riotously inventive ... this should leave you grinning like a Jolly Roger.'
'A delight from start to finish ... Brechtian theatre of the best kind, which keeps both cast and audience on their toes ... The chorus is tremendous. It fits this lovely old music hall like a glove'
'Fun from high seas with perfect execution THIS British, all-male Pirates is a delight, a freshly scrubbed and very funny production in which the musical and verbal wit of Gilbert and Sullivan is privileged over everything else'
'Sasha Regan's production of The Pirates of Penzance is a swashbuckling tour de force of sheer entertainment, the very model of a modern take on the all-time Gilbert & Sullivan favourite ... This production of The Pirates of Penzance is must-see theatre for all fans of Gilbert and Sullivan and enthusiastic theatre lovers'
'An exuberant, engaging production…joyous - energetically staged and performed. Director Sasha Regan and musical director Christopher Mundy give free rein to the energy of the show and the audience can't help but be swept away with the fun...if you want a great evening of song and laughter, let yourself be taken captive by these pirates'
'Lizzi Gee’s choreography is sensationally good, being, as it is, so sympathetically in-tune with Gilbert’s mischievous book. Michael England’s musical supervision is also beautifully judged and … I raise my Jolly Roger in honour of The Pirates Of Penzance. It is the very model of a modern presentation of G&S'
