The Pirates of Penzance

When eye patches were as popular as iPads! These sentimental, sherry sipping pirates don’t need a GPS to find a “bevy of beautiful maidens” on the rocky coast of Cornwall, and their dutiful 21 year old apprentice, Frederic, doesn’t need an app to help him figure out that his elusive leap year birthday won’t occur until the distant date of 1940. Mellifluous Mabel doesn’t need Twitter to trill her way to true love, and the panicked policemen don’t need Facebook to face their fears of the better armed pirates – by hiding. But the prettily pattering “very model of a modern Major-General” might do well to search Google before “telling a terrible story” and then finding out that the revenge seeking pirates are really “all noblemen who have gone wrong.” And you won’t need a laptop, or any other technology, to summon up images of Queen Victoria pardoning her wayward, but loyal, subjects while you hum along to familiar tunes from Verdi to “Hail, hail the gang’s all here.”