THEATER REVIEW / ‘PIRATES OF PENZANCE’ : Uncharted Waters : Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera production explores new territory, with spectacular results.

The show may be 113 years old, but virtually all the cobwebs of antiquity have been brushed aside in the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera’s revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance.”

Not content with stodgy, literal staging or even a safe recreation of Joseph Papp’s 1980 synthesizer-backed update, director-choreographer Michael Barnard pilots his “Pirates” into new, uncharted waters with spectacular results. This is the Civic Light Opera’s best offering since “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Barnard’s primary innovation is in drawing parallels between the unfettered playfulness of childhood imagination and Gilbert & Sullivan’s nonsensical world inhabited by a band of tenderhearted pirates, a bevy of beautiful maidens and a befuddled Major-General. Presenting all these extravagant characters as adults who never grew up puts a refreshing slant on their amusingly inane antics and gives free license to all sorts of wild staging.

There’s plenty of justification for such a reading in this tale of an inept band of buccaneers who refuse to attack anyone weaker than themselves and never prey on orphans (being without parents themselves, they’re moved to sympathy for kindred spirits). Their scene-stealing Pirate King (Stephen Zinnato) could out-prance Peter Pan in his excitement for the grand adventure of the high seas.

But as their young protege Frederic (Paul Grant) points out, these brigands are too tenderhearted to make piracy pay.

Lest we mistake Frederic for a voice of mature reason, bear in mind that he fell in with the band when his childhood nurse (Rita McKenzie), mistaking her master’s instructions to get the boy apprenticed to a pilot, indentured him to pirates instead.

It’s clear from McKenzie’s delightfully histrionic performance that Frederic’s training has left room for some serious growing up, particularly when it comes to balancing dogmatic devotion to duty with personal loyalties.

As his contracted bond of servitude draws to an end, Frederic speaks of his ambivalence for his fellow sea-mates: “Individually I love you all with affection unspeakable--but collectively, I look upon you with a disgust that amounts to absolute detestation.” When he is free, he tells them to sympathetic nods, he shall feel bound to devote himself heart and soul to their extermination.

Further complicating our hero’s divided loyalties are his infatuation with the fair Mabel (Pamela Winslow), who warbles some of the show’s most absurd (and difficult) songs with golden-throated precision.

In the best Gilbert and Sullivan tongue-twisting tradition, Mabel’s military father (Barry Dennen) rattles off the increasingly accelerated “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” in one of the show’s most memorable sequences--just when we think it can’t be done any faster, another refrain proves us wrong.

Sustained high-energy silliness in Barnard’s staging reinforces his vision of the piece as a playground for seafaring specimens of seriously arrested development. The Major-General’s squad of police comport themselves like Keystone Cops, and we’re not above the occasional Elvis impersonation or other topical tie-ins.

Best of all is Barnard’s incorporation of children’s games into his choreography--throughout the show alert viewers will spot movements drawn from skipping rope, patty-cake, leap frog, sack races, tag and hopscotch--not to mention the tug-of-war in the climactic confrontation between the pirates and the police.

In addition to seven Equity salaries among the large cast, considerable resources have been expended on the production values--like the original costumes by Alan Berkoski (featuring non-traditional pirate hues of greens and purples), and lighting by L. K. Strasburg that provides brilliant sunshine and hot pink sunsets as needed.

Several of the Civic Light Opera’s initial problems in its relocation to the Granada Theatre have also been addressed. William Pitkin’s expansive, multilevel set (incorporating elements of Victorian engravings) is well-matched to the stage dimensions, and a new sound system brings clarity out of former muddle.

All of which makes “The Pirates of Penzance” an easy entry into second childhood--unless you’re like Pirate King Zinnato, who admitted after the opening, “I’m still in my first, actually.”

* WHERE AND WHEN

“The Pirates of Penzance” will be performed through Dec. 20, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. (2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays) at the Granada Theatre, 1216 State St. in Santa Barbara. Audio description services available for Saturday matinees and Sunday evenings. Running time is 2 hours, 20 minutes. Tickets are $13-$29.50. For reservations or further information, call 963-3686.