Pirates of Penzance [DVD] [1983] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

First, thanks to Amazon for finally unlinking this from the Delacorte stage recording - again!!!

I would love to have given it - the film version - 5 stars, but it just has too many flaws. "Dumbed down" for a mass audience, it is more self-consciously played for laughs, so inevitably less funny.

There is, however, much to enjoy. The sets are gorgeous, and allow a larger venue for Danielle's wonderfully quirky choreography, which Kline, the late Tony Azito, and their respective choruses make full use of. Kline, naturally, buckles a good swash and, given a whole (stage) ship to play in, leaps, climbs, falls and swings around it like a piratical Tarzan. Penzance does look more New England than old Cornwall, and the sets have been criticised as "stagy", but a realistic G&S would be a contradiction in terms.

The chorus of Police also make full use of the set, mainly to hide in, whilst Azito tumbles about like animated rubber. The late George Rose is a wonderful Major General - I particularly liked his spluttering fury getting the Pirate King right in the eye - and Ronstadt and Smith have gained confidence from their Broadway run. As for Angela Lansbury - everyone's favourite aunt is totally miscast, and in the second act veers between an irritation and an irrelevance. Patricia Routledge at the Delacorte was incomparably better. The female chorus, partly dubbed by the Broadway soloists and obviously post-synched, are a great improvement on the Delacorte one - admittedly not difficult. But the girls sobbing hysterically at Frederic's suggestion that they might be too plain to get husbands is wonderfully funny.

G&S fans should know that the libretto has been horribly cut. Gilbert can use some pruning, but not the chain-saw massacre committed here, making the action jerky, not helped by some dire editing. The nonsense involving the local dogs should have been drowned at birth - the idea, not the dogs, and the over-long battle between Pirates and Police cut by at least half. The idea of interrupting a "traditional" G&S performance was good as a visual metaphor for what Papp was trying to do, but rapidly descends into the bar-brawl beloved of B movie Westerns and is just as tedious. And for this we lose the glorious male voice chorus "We triumph now"!

The chapel scene "When you had left our pirate fold", such a gem at the Delacorte, is pretty awful; the staging isn't big enough for the actors - particularly two tall men - to fling themselves about, (and it wobbles!) the dialogue is hacked to death, and Kline commits the only bit of truly bad acting I've ever seen from him, and which no director should have let him get away with - though I suspect they may well have been responsible for it. (ADDENDUM Watching this scene again, I feel I might have been too harsh. It still isn't a patch on the Delacorte version, the dialogue has been badly cut, the editing is poor, and the laughs too contrived, but I was rather too rude about Mr Kline [I'm sure he's gutted!]. It isn't the show-stopper it was at the Delacorte, but still not as bad as I suggested.)

However, the big set pieces are superb - particularly "With cat-like tread/Come, friends who plough the sea!" sung and danced with great verve. "Sighing softly to the river", with Rose, Kline, Azito and both choruses, is simply hilarious, and the introduction contains a wonderful visual joke which I will not spoil. The film also has some great fun with Gilbert's dialogue, as well as some lovely self-referential jokes.

The finale is brilliant, very attractive, better acted and much tighter than the Delacorte, which did go on a bit. And, happily, Kline's young and highly susceptible Pirate King finally gets a girlfriend, not, with respect to Ms Routledge, a surrogate mother, as at the Delacorte!

And my favourite moment of the film? I will just say - watch Kline's face during "For all our faults, we love our Queen!" - priceless!

Although this is almost 30 years old, it is without a doubt one of the best performances that I have seen of any G and S opera. It is in glorious technicolour and is well acted, danced and sung by the cast. It is also very funny and all of the cast seem to be having a whale of a time. I have not regretted buying this DVD and play it a lot.

I would also recommend you watch the DVD of the original stage version of this opera. This has the same cast with only one change - Patricia Routledge here in place of Angela Lansbury in the DVD of the film - Patricia Routledge is outstanding in the part and I cannot understand why she was not chosen for the film. Although the lighting, sound and camera work in the stage version are much poorer than the film DVD, the fact that the actors are playing in front of a live audience in the open air gives the DVD of the Broadway play a vibrancy and excitement that does not come over so well in the film DVD

.. they're talking about a different disc.

In 1980, Joseph Papp produced a wonderful version in Central Park, staring Kevin Kline as the Pirate King, Patricia Routledge as Ruth, Linda Ronstadt as Mabel, and Rex Smith as Frederic. This was videoed and you can buy the DVD transfer elsewhere here = this is the disc they're talking about. The sound and vision are not great, but as a recording of a show you'd never otherwise see (it only had forty-odd performances) it's fine and proves, if you ever had a doubt, that Kevin Kline can sing very, very quickly. Every subsequent production since should at least attempt to match this one, even if not all try (I'm looking at you, ENO in 2004...)

In 1981, the production transferred to Broadway with 3/4 of the leading cast staying the same - Estelle Parsons replaced Patricia Routledge. It ran for ages (nearly 800 performances).

In 1983, the film version was released. Again, 3/4 of the leading cast was the same - this time, Angela Lansbury was Ruth... hence the complaints about her here.

It took years, but a DVD transfer of the film was finally released in the US in September 2010, and this is it. Both sound and vision are, to my ears and eyes, flawless and the result is vastly better than any other Pirates you can buy. If you've got a multi-region DVD player (if not, why not?) get it. Nearly all TVs bought in the past decade will show NTSC as well as you can ever show NTSC.