MUSIC REVIEW : ‘Pirates’ Keeps Moving--Not Always Forward

Perhaps inspired by Joseph Papp’s then-controversial 1980 Broadway production, the Brea Theatre League is presenting its own new version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” through Saturday in the Curtis Theatre.

Director and choreographer Nikki Hevesy, ties the action to the 20th Century through an added prologue, and spices up the staging by keeping the characters in almost constant motion. The result, produced by Darrell Connerton, is a lively and fun, if unsettling, revival.

The idea that an audience in 1994 cannot relate to artistic products of earlier periods unless they are somehow modified is a popular and problematic assumption. Is it producers’ or directors’ comment on our level of education, insularity and patience, or do they simply feel driven to re-create? Even if one agrees that ample precedent exists for liberal re-stagings, it seems reasonable and ethical to allow authors and composers to govern--even after death--whatever aspects of their product they invented or designed. Gilbert & Sullivan provided witty librettos and sprightly scores. In this production, Sullivan’s melodies survived intact--with an insertion of “Sorry Her Lot,” from “H.M.S. Pinafore,” in Act II--but had to contend with a bizarre, synthesizer-heavy taped accompaniment left over from the League’s 1988 staging.

Those melodies were sung with polish and personable characterization, particularly by Gretchen Weiss, Darren Buckels and David Kirk Grant, as Mabel, Frederic and the Pirate King. Raun Imperial breezed through Major-General Stanley’s patter song, “Model of a Modern Major General” with humorous elan.

Gilbert’s book suffered a new preface, supplied by Hevesy, in which Rob Wyatt’s opening set--the deck of a three-masted pirate ship--first appears as an exhibit in a contemporary maritime museum, in which a boy named Bobbi dreams of high-seas adventures.

The same scenery then served the 19th-Century material--caricatures of people, pirates included, who cannot escape their overblown sense of duty.

The addition was thoughtfully corroborative, but the text paled in contrast to Gilbert’s clever parody. In the final scene, little Bobbi (Aaron Braunstein) returned as a ring bearer, for a wedding between the pirates and the General’s daughters.

* The Brea Theatre League production of “Pirates of Penzance” by Gilbert & Sullivan continues through Saturday at the Curtis Theatre, 1 Civic Center Circle, Brea. Show times: 8 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. $7 to $12.50. (714) 990-7722.