Pirates of Penzance

In this most affectionately absurd of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, a young man named Frederic discovers that his pirate apprenticeship has no end in sight, all because he was born on February 29. Technically only five years old despite his twenty-one years of existence, he must serve another sixty-three years to the Pirate King before he can marry Mabel, the daughter of a Major-General who earned his military reputation primarily through strategic hiding. The pirates themselves are a gentle lot who only steal from other pirates and weep at the slightest provocation. What follows is a glorious collision between pedantic contractual precision and sincere romantic devotion, between military pomp and cowardly cunning. The score bubbles with unforgettable melodies, from Mabel's defiant "Poor Wand'ring One" to the Major-General's breathless patter about his questionable battlefield exploits. The jokes work on every level: the surface absurdity, the inverted social codes, the pure joy of watching language twisted into elaborate configurations of nonsense that somehow make perfect sense.