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February 22, 2008 > Arts & Entertainment > Easy sailing for HMS Pinafore musical

Easy sailing for HMS Pinafore musical

By Rameez Anwar | For the Thresher

Despite some hiccups in execution, the Rice Light Opera Society’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore is buoyed by an energetic cast, capable orchestra and excellent singing in the two lead roles.

In opera productions such as this one, the most important element, aside from being able to perform the music, is a lively and committed cast. These kinds of productions cannot rely on extravagant set pieces and lavish costumes to engage the audience. Thankfully, the cast abounds in energy, following the lead of the hilarious and crowd-pleasing performance by Patrick Kruse (Will Rice ‘07) as Captain Corcoran.

Kruse deftly navigates Corcoran through dangerous emotional territory. Captain Corcoran is the de facto antagonist in an opera that lacks any malicious characters. His refusal to let his daughter Josephine (Lauren Cordray) marry a sailor of low birth and his attempts to hook her up with Sir Joseph Porter (Wiess sophomore Alex Lawler) create the conflict that drives the show.

However, while Kruse has to play the villain by default, his character still has to portray a well-intentioned father who is not evil so much as he is fixated on conforming to rigid class structures. Kruse manages this trick so well that even as the audience witnesses Captain Corcoran’s full wrath when he learns of his daughter’s plans to elope, it can only laugh while he glowers and brandishes his cat-‘o-nine-tails.

What is most impressive is that Kruse is able to elicit these laughs without resorting to prat falls and hyperactive body movement, relying instead on subtle facial ticks and inflections in speech. The rest of the cast follows Kruse’s example and everyone delivers a strong performance. The only aspect of the acting that seemed off is that it sometimes looks as though Lawler closes his eyes for no reason.

The first scene of the opera falls flattest in terms of energy. After a lively but brief song from the chorus, Little Buttercup (Brown junior Gillian Smith) introduces herself in a sung soliloquy. Unfortunately, her facial expressions as she sings never really match the emotion of her lovely voice — for much of the song she merely stares blankly out into the audience. Smith redeems herself with her performance after that initial scene.

As for the singing, the two lead roles of Ralph Rackstraw (Andrew Reich) and Josephine handle their parts very well. The lengthier songs never become tedious because of their excellent singing. Cordray’s voice, in particular, is truly operatic. Additionally, both actors match the intensity in their voices with emotive facial expressions, and when they are not singing, their acting is just as good as the rest of the cast’s.

The singing quality for the supporting cast is less consistent. Fortunately, the songs rarely feature the weaker singers solo, but the songs that do tend to drag. The orchestra handled the music well, although the instruments and the singers occasionally sounded off-beat in relation to each other during the Saturday night performance. This mishap may have been because members of the orchestra were still trickling in five minutes before the start of the show. By the middle of the first act, it sounded as though things were sorted out.

The costumes and set are simple but effectively done. Whenever the sparsely decorated three-tiered stage and blue backdrop begin to feel too familiar, director Geoffrey Copper (Sid ‘07) infuses the set with new life either through the addition of new characters or by staging a lively dance number.

The aforementioned scene between Buttercup and Corcoran and the arrival of Sir Joseph and his relatives are two moments that give the production a real energy boost. The dresses of the female characters look as if they were steeped in the same dye used to paint Easter eggs and stand in fresh contrast to the monochromatic costumes of the sailors aboard the H.M.S. Pinafore. And members of the audience kept craning their necks to watch as Sir Joseph and his coterie arrived while singing in a boat that rolled from the back of the room and down the aisle to dock with the stage — definitely one of the highlights of the night.

As far as small-scale productions go, H.M.S. Pinafore is top-notch. Though there are rough patches, the cast and solid music performance more than make up for the few lapses in quality.

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