Having started life as an off-West End production, Union Theatre’s award-winning production of The Pirates of Penzance has toured Australia and is now embarking upon its first UK tour. Director Sasha Regan’s re-imagining of this old favourite is a wonderful confection of tongue-in-cheek sentimentality and riotous silliness. The story revolves around Frederic, an unworldly lad with an exaggerated sense of duty who has been apprenticed to a band of soft-hearted pirates. He is now he is 21 and his apprenticeship is coming to an end. Never having seen a young woman before, when he encounters Mabel, the beautiful daughter of Major-General Stanley, it is love at first sight. Then he discovers that as he was born in a leap year on the 29^th of February he has only had five birthdays, and his apprenticeship will not end until his 21^st birthday. It seems he must dutifully stay with the pirates for another 63 years! The original libretto and score are left unmolested, so lovers of Gilbert and Sullivan will relish hearing again all the familiar songs such as ‘Poor wandering one’ and ‘With cat-like tread’. Only the most hidebound traditionalists would mourn the absence of females in the cast, so convincing is this version. I found it quite revelatory.

Making his professional debut, Samuel Nunn is a suitably dashing yet naïve Frederic, while Alan Richardson is in great voice as his beloved Mabel, hitting impossibly high runs of notes with all the ease of a star coloratura soprano. Resplendent in hunting pink, Miles Western is indeed the very model of a modern Major-General, negotiating the tongue-twisting rhymes of his signature song with impressive speed. Amid all the swashbuckling and bravado Alex Weatherhill gives real poignancy to his portrayal of lovelorn spinster Ruth whose designs on Frederic come to a sudden end when Mabel appears on the scene.

David Griffiths is an excellent piano accompanist, but there is no doubt that Sullivan’s clever parodies of grand opera are best heard in the original orchestral score. Gilbert’s witty lyrics demand great clarity of diction, particularly when delivered rapidly, and there were some moments in the first act when words were lost. But these quibbles aside, this is undoubtedly a hugely enjoyable show, for having an all-male cast has created new opportunities for comedy that are exploited to the full. This production is as much comic ballet as comic operetta, and Lizzi Gee’s highly inventive choreography is often hysterically funny. Not for purists perhaps, but this is a wonderfully fresh take on The Pirates of Penzance. Highly recommended.     ★★★★☆   Mike Whitton   28/04/15