You can think of Gilbert & Sullivan as a combination of Tom Lerher, The Princess Bride, Weird Al, and a touch of Buffy. It is clever, witty, erudite, wacky, and almost ridiculously quotable.
What, never?
I see what you did there.
I didn’t know TOS did it too. I figured it was a reference to Star Trek: Insurrection.
For weeks I’ve been meaning to watch Pirates of Penzance (1983). Just haven’t found the time.
Actually, I think Tapioca was describing a Pinafore production that was adapted (or at least smashed into place with the repeated assistance of a sledgehammer) to take place on the TOS Enterprise.
Insurrection featured an agonizingly stupid rendition of “A British Tar” from Pinafore:
His nose should pant
and his lip should curl,
His cheeks should flame
and his brow should furl,
His bosom should heave
and his heart should glow,
And his fist be ever ready
for a knock-down blow.
There is a San Francisco theater troupe called the Lamplighters that specializes in Gilbert and Sullivan (though they do other works too, occasionally). HMS Pinafore is part of their regular repertoire; they do it every few years.
That’s a different song, and a different operetta.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mikado/Act_I/Part_Va
I’ve been hating Gilbert and Sullivan for two days now because I have I am the very model of a modern Major-General stuck in my head. It happened while trying to find the HMS Pinafore to watch.
I love that production. Kevin Kline, Angela Lansbury, Linda Ronstadt and a surprisingly good Rex Smith - what’s not to love?
Just make sure not to confuse it with this film which came out about the same time. Dire.
I know–hence the reason I talked about the Little List song from The Mikado in the previous paragraph.
That they added a bunch of songs from other G&S operettas (notoriously the “Madness” song from Ruddigore) and swapped some of the keys of the songs around to match Rondstat’s great, but non-operatic voice?
Granted, those are fairly minor things (not the song that was shoehorned in, but the other stuff) but you asked, I answered. 
For what it’s worth, I thought overall it was excellent and Kevin Klein had more fun with The Pirate King than was probably legal in most states. What a killer performance.
What’s nice about the production is that, unlike many of the D’Olyly Carte and Sargent recordings, the director realized “…hey…this is a comedy. It’s supposed to be funny even if it is ART!”
I’m not sure where you are, Yog, but most of the big cities have some sort of Gilbert & Sullivan group (of varying quality) that goes through at least the most popular, doing one or two a year. We saw a perfectly awful production a couple of years ago at University of Chicago – the parts were all played by people in their 70s, or so it seemed. One of the troubles with a G&S group that doesn’t bring in younger actors.
Milwaukee’s SKYLIGHT Theatre is doing PINAFORE in its 2010-11 season (I forget the dates, I’m assuming you can check online if you’re near Milwaukee) and we’re intending to go – they tend to have excellent productions.
Heh, I was reading a book that discussed the life of Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, and it mentioned he specifically was the person parodied in that song - so I looked it up. It is indeed a mighty earworm. 
Fair enough, although I rather like the additions from the other operettas. And I agree about the comedy.
If you really want to do your head in, try this - a heavily-adapted version of The Pirates of Penzance, in German, featuring Wagnerian soprano Martha Mödl as Ruth and Mozartian soprano Arleen Auger as Mabel. It is a marvel.
Not if you know Altoids fans.
Pretty much the same as was done in Joe Papp’s theater in the park production.
There is a “Broadway Archive” videotape of his performance, but the technical quality is awful.
Sadly, it was the only movie he directed. I love the visual style of this film - a fantasy world that is believable to its inhabitants, like “The City of Lost Children”.
My wife and I were two of the handful of people who managed to see this in the theater. It had been the misfortune being selected for an experiment. The studio decided to show it on pay-per-view at the same time it was going to be in the theaters. The theater chains retaliated by showing it the contractually obligated minimum amount - one week in one theater per chain. We saw it in a 120 seat theater in a mall. It had no advertising at all, just a single listing of showtimes in the paper. It never had a chance to find it’s audience. The VHS, Beta and LaserDisc releases don’t do the film justice either with a terrible pan & scan of it’s wonderful widescreen composition.
I saw Iolanthe at the same place. I’m sure the Evanston Light Opera does a better job, but it’s ticket prices are three times U of C.
Both my brother’s daughters are sopranos, and the younger was the lead in their high school musicals. And they kept wasting their budget purchasing the rights to miserable Broadway properties like Lucky Stiff, when they could have done a G&S show for free and spent their budget on sets and costumes. And my niece would have been a wonderful Mabel.
I wasn’t very active in my college, choosing to spend the time in endless LAN parties playing video games 
And I’ve only been to 1 play (Avenue Q), and 2 concerts (and no sporting events unless you cound 1 WWE wrestling show), so I’m not very in touch with the live entertainment crowd. My main outdoor entertainment are movies which I don’t have to drive downtown for because I hate downtown.
My post was mostly brought because I was concerned since I once heard about the play CATS!. They said it was “coming to an end”, which to me, meant they’re not going to do it ever again unless it’s decades from now, sort of like they rarely rerelease movies in the theaters. I thought my only chance to catch it was on DVD, which would be boring; I’d rather just download the songs if that’s the case.
I’m in Los Angeles, so Milwaukee’s a little far for me
When someone says a show like “Cats” is coming to an end, it means the Broadway production is going to be closing. Basically the professional theatre community believes they’ve milked all they can out of it. So the show closes, some major prop house buys the set and costumes, saving them to rent if a regional production company wants to stage a tour or just to warehouse for future auction later. The actual rights to the show are opened up for license by one of a number of companies who own the licenses(this is just the major houses carrying licenses for musicals, there are some which specialize in plays). If you’re interested in producing a show, you call them and they’ll quote you a price for the scripts, musical scores, props lists, etc. Some houses have full sets you can rent and use as well. Pretty much everything about a Broadway production is copyrighted, and you can’t use any of it without an agreement with the rights owner. The choreography, the set design, lighting design, sound design, even the characterization. You’ll sometimes hear that so-and-so “originated” a role, and that means they were the first professional actor to perform it in a professional setting, so their interpretation is definitive. If they played the character as a scheming, conniving, control freak, then that’s how it’s played in all subsequent performances for that production, even if they change cast members. When a new production(a revival) comes in a new performer can put their stamp on the role but it’s not quite the same as the original.
Gilbert and Sullivan, by virtue of their age, doesn’t require licensing to produce. Their works are in the public domain, which makes them very popular among cash-strapped community theatres. My local theatre did “Pirates of Penzance” two years ago and “H.M.S. Pinafore” last year. There are companies which rent/sell full scores/arrangements of their works. In that case what you’re paying for is a nice, big, high quality book, not the actual intellectual property. A conductors score which will hold up to five weeks of rehearsal and three weeks of performance is not generally created at Kinkos.
For “Cats” specifically, you’d need to contact the Rogers and Hamerstein Organization. They own the rights to “Cats”(warning, link plays “Memory”) and provide rented materials, including all the musical books, and info you need to produce the show. Someone will probably do the show eventually, there are a ton of companies dying for it to become available, but the cost in royalties and materials is probably prohibitive and most companies couldn’t stage it(Andrew Lloyd Webber shows are notoriously difficult) so they don’t bother. If someone wants to see “Cats” let them go to Broadway or wait for one of the touring groups.
There was a big splash recently about the first High School production of “Phantom of the Opera”. It made headlines because if it went well then the Really Useful Group might allow more High School productions, and that would energize youth around theatre. But that’s by far the unusual case. Most schools, if they do musicals at all, tend towards easier shows with lower licensing costs.
Enjoy,
Steven