The Pirates of Penzance

America’s foremost Gilbert & Sullivan repertory ensemble, the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, presents acclaimed Broadway and television star Hal Linden in the gala 125th anniversary production of The Pirates of Penzance. Set on the rocky coast of Cornwall, England, the show centers on a band of tenderhearted pirates celebrating the coming of age of their apprentice, Frederic. Although Frederic’s apprenticing to pirates was the mistake of his nurse maid Ruth, he has dutifully served, but he now announces his plan to devote his life to the extermination of piracy. The naïve young man meets a group of beautiful girls, their father, the delightfully dotty Major General Stanley (Hal Linden), and enlists the help of some bumbling and diffident policemen. But Ruth and the Pirate King tell Frederic that his apprentice papers state that he won’t be of age until his 21st birthday, which won’t occur until the distant date of 1940 because Frederic was born in leap year on the 29th of February.