Youthful ‘Pirates of Penzance’ Are Ready to Steal the Show in Torrance

In the theater, it’s called “hell week,” the last few days of rehearsal before a show opens.

For the 35 South Bay youngsters who will perform Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” this weekend at the Torrance Recreation Center, this was hell week.

“Practice the dance. Only one of you knew it,” choreographer Annie Beckerman admonished midway in Wednesday’s rehearsal.

“Give me that pirate look, that pirate stance,” pleaded director Stephan A. Norris. “You look like you’re totally asleep.”

Later, the two confided that the show was in better shape than they made it sound. They were only sounding harsh. “Hell week is when we’re mean,” said Beckerman, to get the youngsters to try harder.

“They always surprise you,” said Norris. “They’ll clown around, and you don’t think they’re listening, but they do. And during the performance, they get serious. It all comes out.”

For the grown-ups who run the Young Performers theater program for the Torrance Parks and Recreation Department, the overriding challenge is to let the youngsters have fun as they spend a couple of months honing a creditable performance.

“They work hard, and we encourage some cutting up. It’s a part of the rehearsal,” said Taylor Thompson, the city performing arts coordinator who supervises the program. “But we have some rules, including, ‘Thou shalt sit at the homework table when not on stage.’ ”

Chris Lee, an 11-year-old whose character commands the troop of British bobbies in “Pirates,” says it’s a tough experience, but fun. “In the end, the total product is just great,” said Chris, who appeared in the Young Performers’ version of “A Christmas Carol.” “I like getting on the stage the opening day.”

Theater professionals like Norris and Beckerman are hired to put the youngsters through their paces and provide piano accompaniment for the shows. Sets are recycled from former shows at El Camino College: The ominous castle in “Pirates,” for instance, was originally designed for an El Camino production of “The Lion in Winter.”

In the 15 years Torrance has offered youth theater, the plays, usually musicals, have been specially written for the group. Alice in Wonderland and Dracula have been among the themes. But “Pirates” is the most ambitious show it has done because it is primarily singing and dancing. It also has a boat that sails out into the audience.

Thompson said that, at first, there was some skepticism that the youngsters--who range from primary grades to high school age--could handle the rapid music and sometimes tongue-twisting lyrics of a Gilbert and Sullivan romp. To solve that potential problem, the group is performing a version adapted for a young cast. It has been shortened and the music simplified and transposed to a lower key.

But it retains the basic story of a young man who is mistaken for a pirate but winds up on the right side of the law at the end. The most familiar songs are included, among them “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” and the bobbies’ familiar lament about their unhappy lot.

Beckerman says the youngsters are “doing a good job for the amount of expertise they’ve had in singing and dancing.”

The two or three productions Torrance does each year are cast through open auditions that Thompson said attract a high number of repeat performers. Shows have expandable casts so that most who try out can have a part. In “Pirates,” for example, there’s a large contingent of bobbies and pirates.

But Norris said: “We have some prima donnas. If they don’t get the lead, they walk off.”

Thompson said he wants youngsters to get a taste of how serious theater works. “We hope they’ll learn the discipline it takes to be in a production,” he said. “They learn to work together and rely on each other. . . . They learn what commitment means.”

Performers are required to be on time for rehearsals, and some have been bounced from shows because they were absent too often. Sometimes, too, a youngster drops out because of illness or miscalculation about the demands of doing a show. “But most hang in,” Thompson said.

If a desire to perform is what draws the youngsters to Young Performers shows, Norris said that making new friends and socializing is an equally strong attraction.

And he and others who are supervising “Pirates” say there’s a simple key to getting performances out of kids, who are as prone to playing as paying attention to direction:

Patience.