The pirates! The pirates, oh despair!

I saw The Pirates of Penzancce at the New York City Opera last night. Gilbert and Sullivan. Pirates. Awesome.

I love that play - we did a concert version in high school, so I know the score pretty well, and, well, it's just a fantastic operetta. And this was a particularly well executed version. The director really knew how to do comic opera effectively. Timing was excellent, they played the obvious jokes deftly and the satire completely deadpan. Mabel was totally over the top, which actually worked much better for the character than the more straight versions I've seen. They did a Monty Python style puppet show to the overture, making this the best overture ever.

And the intro in the program was written by the two guys who came up with International Talk Like a Pirate Day.