Smooth sailing

Grand Room Theatric's light-hearted H.M.S. Pinafore

by Bill Rodriguez

Small wonder H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert & Sullivan's first wildly popular hit, especially on this side of the pond. Like its immediate follow-up, The Pirates of Penzance, the send-up makes fun of class distinctions by mocking status pretensions and delusions. You don't look around for what country or century you're in when you're laughing at that.

Grand Room Theatrics, at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in West Kingston, is doing an enjoyable job of work on this light-hearted task, which sure is harder than it may look. Little, no-budget theater companies can easily bite off more than they can chew, especially when they know audiences are eager to slap a knee or two. But as they demonstrated last summer by turning two early Gilbert & Sullivan toss-offs -- a one-act and a burlesque -- into must-sees, the Courthouse troupe knows to put pros in enough of the leads to carry it off in giddy style along with the ardent amateurs.

The story couldn't be simpler, involving thwarted lovers, the foolishly powerful, and babes switched at birth. Gilbert stole it from Shakespeare, who stole components from as many writers as he could. The daughter of the captain of the eponymous ship, Josephine (Joanne Mouradjian), iis betrothed to the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Right Honorable Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B (David W. Price, who also directs), who is as elderly as he is pompous. However, her mere presence onboard has won the heart of simple seaman Ralph Rackstraw (Fred Scheff), who couldn't be more beneath her station if he were a cargo hold rat. But lo! -- the fair fiancé has been unaccountably smitten by the sight of the humble tar! Could they -- would they . . . should they? You figure it out.

This whole class distinction fuss is the real heart and soul of the comedy, more than the romance. Everybody is made a fool for English social stratification rather than for love. Even Josephine, melancholy from pining for her sailor, holds him off in "Refrain, Audacious Tar" while admitting to us in an aside that she would "laugh my rank to scorn . . . were he more highly born, or I more lowly."

We get a vile villain in the form of dastardly but amiable Deadeye Dick (Thomas Epstein), who will not rest -- "Arrrgh!" -- until the lovers are as miserable as he. We get "little" Buttercup (Pam Thibodeaux), the plebian rowboat merchant who pines for the patrician Captain Corcoran (Edgar Edwards), who in turn sighs for her. We get a whole deckful of merry swabbies and the First Lord's sisters and cousins and aunts, who caper and join in chorus to remark on the goings-on.

Although William S. Gilbert's libretto is as witty as most of the team's operettas, it was Arthur S. Sullivan's sprightly music that first made the show popular. After the broiling London summer of 1878 rendered indoor entertainment daunting, it took his performing a medley of encored Pinafore tunes at Covent Garden to whip up box office business across town. Some are still hummed in showers, or at least sound familiar when overheard -- do the words "poor little buttercup" bring any notes to mind? Pianist and music director Dale Munschy does a rousing job providing a musically sturdy backbone, playing with brio and skill.

The centerpiece song of Pinafore, "When I Was a Lad," belongs to the admiral, who waxes nostalgic about his career rise through simply doing what he was told. Such as polishing the handle of the big front door, whereby "I polished up that handle so carefullee/ That now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navee!" Sort of like making a dutiful janitor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff. Or a President's kid a President. (Gilbert was satirizing a publisher that Queen Vicky had made Lord Admiral. Unlike some we could name, he worked out.)

The trained voices of tenor Scheff as Ralph and Thibodeaux as Josephine are especially pleasant to listen to, and even Epstein's Deadeye rasps out a mean and musical ditty. All three have had plenty practice hitting the high notes at performances by OSLO and other music groups in New England. As last year, my personal favorite performance was by Price, here giving us a delightfully admirable admiral -- if you like a malleable face that can mug like a cartoon character, and a comic sensibility that could give the Marx Brothers a run for their slapsticks.

You won't get a fancy set or a high-kicking chorus line, but the courthouse production of H.M.S. Pinafore gets across the Gilbert & Sullivan core intent with energy and flair.

H.M.S. Pinafore is at the Courthouse Center for the Arts Grand Room Theatrics through July 29.