Do you dream of the sea? Do you long to swab the deck with your buddies in time with a hearty shanty? Are you an impish little guy who likes it when babies are switched at birth and roles reversed? The UBC Opera Ensemble answers all these with a hearty “Aye aye!”
This past weekend, UBC Opera performed a run of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1878 comedy H.M.S Pinafore, directed by UBC Opera Ensemble founder Nancy Hermiston and conducted by Leslie Dala. The opera follows the crew of the British naval ship the H.M.S. Pinafore over the course of a day in the docks of Spithead, England.
Captain Corcoran of the Pinafore eagerly awaits the arrival of Admiral Sir Joseph Porter, the self-proclaimed “monarch of the sea” and head of the royal navy, whom he hopes to betroth to his daughter, Josephine. However, she has fallen in love with lowly sailor Ralph Rackstraw and hopes to run away with him. As you might imagine, antics ensue.
From the first overture, Dala’s orchestra, hidden in the pit below the Old Auditorium’s stage, delivered a flawless and energetic performance.
The curtain rose on a beautifully-constructed set of the Pinafore’s aftercastle, complete with stairs on either side, a mast and rigging and a full helm. Soft blue light simulated the morning, and by the start of the second act, a giant silver disk was lowered from the rigging to serve as the moon. All in all a faithful, if slightly by-the-numbers, production design.
The costumes followed in a similar vein. Sailors pranced in their navy blues and whites, the ladies twirled in Victorian dresses and the officers shone in epaulets and gold filigree. Everyone looked exactly as you’d expect — it could have been fun to see some creative interpretation here, especially considering the popularity and frequent production of the source material.
The chorus of Pinafore crewmen was an easy highlight. They sang and stamped their feet, saluting and dancing as a unified whole, but their choreography was satisfyingly loose — sailors flourished and waved, adding personality to each minor character. When they arrived at a group movement, a synchronized jump or lunge, they managed to strike a balance between synchronicity and sloppiness that sold the group as a disciplined crew of individuals.
With a high level of coordination in dance and music, the production’s ensemble numbers were the most stunning to watch. I was particularly impressed by the finale of the first act, which saw dozens of sailors, sisters, cousins and aunts singing counter to the bass, Dick Deadeye, played by Andrew Greenwood. Dancing and whirling across the stage, the cast ran through recaps of the act’s musical motif, and Greenwood’s voice was strong enough to hold its own against the chorus.
On the flipside, some of the arias, and especially the moments when the orchestra fell away to leave the vocalists on their own, fell slightly flat. The aria vocalists, particularly Tamar Simon (Josephine) and Denis Petrov (Captain Corcoran), gave moving performances, but they didn’t hold my opera layman’s ear like the group numbers did.
“When I Was a Lad” — the comedic centre of H.M.S. Pinafore in which Sir Joseph self-informs on his own incompetence and makes a variety of 19th-century innuendos at his own expense — was hilarious. Geoffrey Schellenberg’s physical comedy, in his powder and florid lipstick, got laughs with nothing more than a turn of the head or a sideways glance.
The opera’s climax, a topsy-turvy twist in which it's revealed that Ralph and his prospective father-in-law Captain Corcoran are the same age, actually, and were switched at birth by their nursemaid who Captain Corcoran now has the hots for, pulled howls of laughter from the crowd when the two men emerged from below deck dressed in each other’s clothing.
In the second act finale, Ralph and Josephine embraced, the Union Jack descended from the rigging and the sailors sang triumphantly of the newly ascendant Ralph, “For he is an Englishman!”
The cast took their bows, and the curtain fell on the H.M.S. Pinafore.
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