Sunken treasure

Parody unsalvageable as Huntington's 'Pirates!' plumbs depths of burlesque humor

May 22, 2009|Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff

To the people who were hooting and hollering at every ribald joke and bawdy gesture, the Huntington Theatre Company's production of "Pirates! (Or, Gilbert and Sullivan Plunder'd)" was clearly a grand night at the operetta.

But for anyone who wants more than sitcom-level rewrites, broad yet toothless parody, and lots of tired pirate gags, it is the very muddle of a modern messed-up musical.

"Pirates!" (if that exclamation point gives you pause, come sit right here by me - and brace yourself, because every single song title in the program has one, too) is the brainchild of Gordon Greenberg, Nell Benjamin, and John McDaniel, who have taken the perfectly fine bit of fluff known as "The Pirates of Penzance" and updated, mashed-up, sexed-up, and topicalized it within an inch of its life. Apparently an evening of silly songs and light romance just isn't complete nowadays without gyrating pelvises, pounding drums, "political" jokes that don't actually have a political point, and onstage vomiting.

I don't wish to sound like a prude; I certainly don't mean to sound like a Gilbert and Sullivan purist, because I'm not: Their buoyancy and wit have aged well, their encrustations of fussiness and preciosity less so. In principle, I'm not at all opposed to having a spot of fun with the old boys. But this just isn't my idea of fun.

Maybe it's yours. Maybe you want to see the bevy of young daughters of the Major-General strip down to bloomers and camisoles, then cavort around the stage and pant at the pirates; maybe hearing them sing "We'd be safer, there's no doubt,/If our blouse we do without" as they do so leaves all your teeth ungritted. Maybe, like the "Pirates!" creators, you're willing to entertain any image, no matter how incongruous - pirates singing about cow-tipping? - for the sake of stuffing in one more joke.

Or maybe you're just a really, really big Johnny Depp fan. Steve Kazee's performance as the Pirate King is extravagant and showy, but it is also strikingly, and ultimately irritatingly, familiar.

Depp threw a bucket of refreshingly salty water into the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie with his insane yet meticulous work as Captain Jack Sparrow, which he famously based on the stylings of Keith Richard and Pepe Le Pew, but even he's grown stale in further iterations of the type. Watching Kazee impersonate Depp impersonating Richard (and Pepe, bien sur) is just weird - and then tedious. And his tormenting of a front-row patron in an extended bit of forced audience participation is downright painful.