2026-01-08 - Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert & Sullivan ====================================================== Pirate King When i read The Incredible Umbrella series by Marvin Kaye, i enjoyed it quite a bit. The story was a pastiche of several famous works including The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert & Sullivan. I bookmarked it to watch later, perhaps. The Incredible Umbrella, Fantastic, Feb 1976 The Flight of the Umbrella, Fantastic, Jun 1977 The Pursuit of the Umbrella, Fantastic, Jan 1979 What i enjoyed most about The Incredible Umbrella was its silliness and irreverence. It brings to mind another series i read as a kid: Spellsinger series by Alan Dean Foster > Although the setting is Narnia-like, the humour is a weird blend of > Mel Brooks and Monty Python. Anyhow, back to Pirates of Penzance... Pirates of Penzance I read in the Wikipedia article that a broadway musical adaptation grossed $8 million in 2025. Not bad! This is the first opera that i recall ever watching. I watched a Canadian production of it on the Internet Archive: The Pirates of Penzance, CBC (1985) While i liked the actors and music, i could not understand their speech very well because of the audio quality and my bad hearing. The video has no subtitles, so my strategy was to read the script and then watch the play, stopping after each song to read more. Got the job done. Pirates of Penzance on Wikisource One the one hand, the plot seems terribly dull to me. Perhaps it was more interesting to people in the 1870's. On the other hand, the lyrics are clever and entertaining. The music and choreography were my favorite parts. The troop of police officers reminded me very much of Keystone Cops, although Pirates of Penzance pre-dates the Keystone Cops by about 33 years. Keystone Cops tags: fiction,music,slapstick,video Tags ==== fiction music slapstick video