# 2026-01-08 - Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert & Sullivan
IMG 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.
HTML The Incredible Umbrella, Fantastic, Feb 1976
HTML The Flight of the Umbrella, Fantastic, Jun 1977
HTML 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:
TEXT 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...
TEXT 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:
HTML 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.
HTML 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.
TEXT Keystone Cops
tags: fiction,music,slapstick,video
# Tags
DIR fiction
DIR music
DIR slapstick
DIR video