I have memorized all the songs and practically all of the dialogue. If you see only one filmed/televised '80s Broadway adaptation of a 19th-century operetta this year, it should be this one!
Eat your heart out, Johnny Depp. You'll never be even half the pirate that Kevin Kline is.
I wish more people were devoted to operetta. Gilbert and Sullivan, in particular, are surprisingly relevant. After all, with their wordplay and funny songs, crazy situations, and outrageous characters (satirizing well-known personages of the day), the Savoy operettas were the Victorian equivalent of Saturday Night Live (the primary difference being that at D'Oyly Carte, real talent was required; Ashlee Simpson would never have gotten close enough to a mic to even think about lip-synching).
So far, I've advanced the cause of Gilbert and Sullivan, light opera, and the 1983 production of Pirates of Penzance; made casual reference to an upcoming pirate film, likely to prove popular; and laid a smack down on Ashlee Simpson: All in a good night's blogging.
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