Pirates of Penzance
Opening Night: November 29, 2017
Closing: December 10, 2017
Theater: Skirball Center for the Performing Arts @ NYU
Swimming pools, twinkly lights, a well-stocked Tiki Bar and beach balls welcome the audience to this raucous and utterly zany beach party adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. The entire audience joins the cast on the stage-beach, immersed in the action alongside sappy pirates, dewy-eyed damsels, bumbling bobbies and one very stuffy Major General. It is a spunky model of a (post)modern major musical. The Hypocrites, founded in 1997 by Artistic Director Sean Graney, is one of Chicago’s premier off-Loop theater companies, specializing in mounting bold productions that challenge preconceptions and redefine the role of the audience. The company has a reputation for creating exciting, surprising, and deeply engaging theater as it re-interprets classics and tackles ambitious new works.
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December 1, 2017
Though New York has now entered sun-starved December, there is a happy corner of the city where it is high summer. That’s summer as in the (very) silly season, when people have nothing better to do than toss beach balls on sandy strands, play games with words (and musical instruments), trill like canaries and, when the urge strikes them, hop about like enchanted pogo sticks.
This paradise of inanity is on the south side of Washington Square — or, to be specific, the N.Y.U. Skirball Center, which has been colonized by a band of exceedingly likable brigands. They are the title characters of the Hypocrites’ production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” which presents a sweet and restorative alternative to the drudgery of holiday shopping.
You should know that you, dear theatergoer, will be sharing the spotlight with the Hypocrites, a theater troupe from Chicago of remarkable resourcefulness. This production, directed by Sean Graney, invites its audience onto the stage, which has been transformed into a seaside resort, big enough to accommodate a cast of 10, a couple of lifeguards and a throng of movable theatergoers.
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