Note: This review dives into the revised ending of the musical — ahoy, some spoilers ahead!

3Views sent three critics — composer Timothy Huang; Artistic Director of Braata Productions, Karl Williams; and dramaturg Emily Chackerian — to see the Broadway production of Pirates! The Penzance Musical, presented by Roundabout Theatre Company. The musical is a reimagining of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s 1879 comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance.

For this revival, adapter Rupert Holmes shifts the setting of the story from the English coast to 1880 New Orleans, injecting it with new jazz-inspired orchestrations by Joseph Joubert. This Pirates! follows Frederic (Nicholas Barasch), a duty-bound young man, who is indentured to a Pirate King (Ramin Karimloo). When he reaches 21 years of age, Frederic is finally free to go ashore, where he catches the eye of Mabel Stanley (Samantha Williams), the daughter of retired Major General Stanley (David Hyde Pierce). The Pirate King’s men decide they’d like to wed the Major’s other daughters, and conflict, chaos, and swashbuckling ensue. Excerpts from Timothy, Karl, and Emily’s post-show conversation are below.

Timothy Huang: To start, I’m thinking about the difference between musical theater and opera. I was taught that if you go to a show and at the end you are applauding for the performance, you're probably at a musical. If you go to a show and you're applauding the composer, you're probably at an opera. So as an audience member, I was focusing on the performance and the storytelling.

Emily Chackerian: This is [director] Scott Ellis and Roundabout Theatre Company’s version of Pirates of Penzance, aka “Pirates!” It’s not an operetta.

Karl Williams: This is definitely a modern Pirates.

Emily: It’s a very joyful production. It’s funny and fun, and maybe that’s what audiences need right now. I had a conversation with someone the other day about a ‘romantasy’ book and she said, “I'm not reading this to think.” I was watching Pirates! wanting to have critical thoughts, sure, but also just for fun.

Karl: I agree, it felt like an escape. I could buy into what they were presenting, with the nods to the original musical.

Tim: Initially, I couldn’t wrap my head around Holmes’ choice to begin the show with fictional versions of Gilbert and Sullivan (played by Pierce and Preston Truman Boyd, respectively). These “characters” introduce the musical and its context. I think fundamentally the goal was to get Gilbert on stage so that he could give permission for the adaptation to even happen. That's pretty cool, and I appreciated it, both as an audience member and a lyricist. I'm not a Gilbert and Sullivan scholar — it’s never been in my circle of interest, because the reasons people continue to produce an opera like The Mikado are the same reasons that I don't always feel seen or safe. Their work isn’t really for me, which means I wasn't familiar enough with the original lyrics to know when they were changed.

Emily: Some of the new lyrics were very subtly worked in, like in “Poor Wand’ring One,” where there are usually staccato ‘ah’ notes, there were words. But musically it was incredibly different. Usually, that’s a coloratura soprano number, and instead it felt sultry and jazzy, very New Orleans.

Tim: Did you feel they successfully handled the more jazzy, Dixieland sound?

Emily: Some worked and some I wasn't sure — full of ups and downs.

Karl: They kept referencing the Caribbean and New Orleans; was that just to get to the big Mardi Gras ending? I was expecting a more nuanced exploration between the two regions. If there is any city in the U.S. with a similar history to that of the Caribbean, it’s New Orleans — the sugar cane plantations, the grouping of people based on a variety of ancestry via Europe, Africa, and its Indigenous inhabitants impacting the customs and culture. Creole as a language, as well as an ethnic category, the accents, the food! And of course, pirates! The famed privateer-turned-Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, Sir Henry Morgan, was a former pirate — they couldn’t beat him, so they co-opted him. I kept wondering about the connection between the framing of characters like the Major-General and the Pirate King with actual historical pirates that bridged a cross-cultural connection between the Caribbean and the U.S. But then how much were they gonna teach us, versus entertain us? Seemed like they opted to simply entertain the audience.

Tim: To me, the ethos of Gilbert and Sullivan as a whole is to be fearlessly entertaining. To hell with everything else. But at the same time, in 2025, are we okay with just that?

Karl: There is something special about New Orleans: the culture, history, the food, the people, it’s this multicultural place. Somehow, the production missed it.

Tim: A case could be made that it was intentionally left out because they were trying to stay as true to Gilbert and Sullivan. Which begs the question: what is the intersection of people who know the original Pirates of Penzance so well that they could appreciate the adaptation, but didn't love it exactly the way it was before?

Emily: I come to this show from a niche place because I saw Pirates of Penzance when I was like 8, and as an 8-year-old, I loved it. I loved musicals and pirates and sword fighting, so it checked all my boxes. My first pet was a parrot named Penzance — may she rest in peace. But my taste has changed since then, and I can now recognize the problematic elements of Gilbert and Sullivan’s work, whether it's how women are portrayed in both the original — and to an extent, in Pirates! — as a conquest, or the blatant cultural appropriation and racism of The Mikado.

Karl: Going in, I only knew “The Major-General’s Song,” because it's a patter number and great for teaching students breathwork.

Tim: That number was one of my favorite parts of the show because, by adding a meta layer of Pierce playing Gilbert playing the Major-General, the actor could take the song at any tempo he wanted. But then they did an encore where they performed the song at tempo just to prove to us they could! They kept some of the songs as intact as they could, but infused with a new sound.

Karl: I liked that. I thought it worked — it felt like an interpretation that belonged to this current cast, mixed with the traditional way of doing the numbers — so audiences who know them so well won't feel cheated out of the original orchestrations.

Emily: The musical also started with a different number (from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe). In the 1879 version, you get a drinking song to launch you into the show, into port, so to speak. But in 2025, Holmes cut up the song to give more exposition about New Orleans. It was a surprising choice.

Karl: To me, the show truly began with the entrance of the Pirate King. His number was like a shot of energy launching us into the show.

Emily: Karimloo was so delightful.

Tim: You cannot miss him in this production. Singing in all manner of physicality — he was jumping and somersaulting all over that stage.

Karl: It was fantastic!

Tim: The treat for me was David Hyde Pierce. Up until the moment he came out on stage, I was imagining the libretto on the page. Reading it like a Marx Brothers film, and wanting that pace. The minute he came on, it was really beautiful.

Karl: That focus!  

Emily: I love that David Hyde Pierce committed to playing a doddering old fool.

Tim: When the house lights (accidentally) came on during the top of Act 2, he didn't even break a sweat. He didn't blink.

Emily: He was so calm that for a moment, I wondered if the lights were another meta aspect of the show.

Tim: Real talk: In terms of the adaptation, so many of the book scenes were about building goodwill. Because it felt like there was a dissonance between the meta, show-within-a-show aspect and the new orchestrations and the dramatic force of the book. The book had to work harder to entertain because the song adaptations were sometimes dissatisfying, eschewing their traditional roots in favor of what is basically an academic idea. "Wouldn't it be great if this number was swung? Because New Orleans?" That made me a little sad. These songs are usually catharsis, and I don’t know if they hit.

Karl: I loved the movement, but it seemed like choreographer Warren Carlyle said, “Alright, it's now my job to choreograph the hell outta this.” Which yes, I'm entertained by. I love to see the triple threats bringing it. But I just wish there was more to the story.

Tim: Sometimes when I think about adaptation, I get locked into a particular methodology. This made me wonder if they were just going to throw sand on things that weren’t working. If cracks are showing, I think that’s an indication that perhaps the focal point of the adaptation isn’t precise.  

Emily: Absolutely. They originally announced this show as Pirates of Penzance, so I’m curious about the rebranding as Pirates! Was it a marketing ploy? Like, no one wants to see an 1800s operetta, but they want to see a zany new adaptation starring Jinkx Monsoon? Is this how you get new audiences in the door?

Karl: That’s what I thought. Beforehand, I was very concerned with how they were going to handle the idea of all the women going home with the pirates. How would they dive into what a pirate is? Juxtapose that with the police — how would that be handled? Nothing wrong with going for entertainment. But if you are going to bring up these issues, they will linger when someone walks out of the theater. Yes, we're all gonna have a wonderful time because they're great performers. But what was that story?

Tim: I had questions about the casting of the very funny and famed drag queen, Jinkx Monsoon, as Ruth, Frederic’s nurse. Like, is Ruth now a drag persona? Is she a trans woman and is this now queer commentary? Are we replacing the script’s historical ageism with transphobia? That was my concern.

Emily: What is it being played for? Laughs? Camp? Especially when the joke in the text is that Ruth is rejected the minute there’s a younger, prettier girl in sight. In this version, the younger woman isn’t just an ingénue, she also has sex appeal — she swiftly drags Frederic into a tent to boink. It’s also fascinating that they fully cut Ruth and Frederic’s duet, “Oh False One, You Have Deceived Me,” where Frederic accuses her of misleading him about her appearance.

Karl: I would’ve liked to see that.

Tim: Why do you think they cut it?

Emily: Maybe it felt contextually inappropriate with Monsoon in the role? Or frankly, once the younger maidens were introduced, maybe the show had to build up momentum. Maybe it was too serious. The silliness of the production, the over-the-top style and the way that existing songs were twisted to suit the new plot reminded me of English pantomimes or Christmas pantos.

Karl: Emily, you're talking my language now because pantos were my introduction to musical theater in Jamaica. The national pantomime there is based on the English pantomime with stock characters — it’s always good versus evil, and the good wins. It’s over the top, and there’s a fantasy or magical scene. Pirates! feels very similar. And to be honest, pantos are entertaining, but not always well written. They're based on well-known stories and just adapted to the culture. So if you go to a Jamaican pantomime you might see things you resemble from a Western fairy tale. But the language will be Jamaican Creole. It’s very family-friendly, and everything is just amplified.

Tim: The Lehman Engle, or, traditional musical theater philosophy, is that pastiche is the enemy of sincerity. I found myself wondering whether or not, for example, “Poor Wand’ring One” was initially intended to be played sincerely. It’s lovely and it's witty, and then this production makes it a swing number. Suddenly it became a pastiche, and if it had not been adapted in that way, would I care more about that character?

Emily: I never doubted that the actors were enjoying themselves. But what about the earnestness of their characters?

Tim: The absence of sincerity from the drop felt like a huge risk. If you don’t immediately win the audience over, you might never get us.

Karl: Yup, because now we’re depending on the actors and their experience. With this source material, the framework is a little bit shaky. It’s up and down, like you said, Emily. Like, okay, you've done the setup for me, I’ll go on this joy ride. By act two I was ready to be invested a little deeper. And after that impressive number, “The Nightmare Song,” I found myself recommitting to following a simplistic tale, with greater expectations. Then in the musical’s final scenes, not even Pierce’s excellent delivery of the lines prepared me for the didactic shift that happened. Suddenly we were being spoken to: a “lesson” was preached!

Emily: Specifically, the Major General breaks up the fight between pirates, police, and daughters (who have just sung-yelled “GO BACK TO WHENCE YOUR FATHERS CAME!”) by saying “Go back to where you came from"??? Are you mad? [...] This is the land of the clean slate, the blank canvas, the new beginning!”

Karl: Hello, we already had the two worlds of piracy and the law coming together in the form of a wedding. We did not need for the whole company to come downstage and a world map to drop from the ceiling to tell us that we should come together ‘cause we’re all from somewhere else! Too much.

Tim: It was an oversimplification — an underdone “big lesson.” I get the need to not want to be political and preachy,  but these sorts of things still need to be earned in some way. Did I miss that part? Or was the point to accuse me of being the woke mob if I didn’t hoot and holler at the end?

Karl: I don’t mind being the woke mob, but at the same time I would've been okay without the “explanations” or “a button” put on everything.  We got how the Major General ended up here with his Rainbow Coalition of daughters — they already set that up, and I loved that… plus this is an Englishman. He's clearly-

Emily: Colonizing.

Karl: And that's the sort of work I'm doing in my head already. Just keep going, keep it light. I would've gotten what this is anyway, or don't you trust your audience enough to get it?

Tim: Is it pandering to people? I had such a vehement response to even the audience’s reaction to that finale.

Emily: Karl, you were sitting behind me. I think I actually shook my head when they sang “We’re all from someplace else.”

Karl: It goes on for a bit, too. It's not just a point that's made. But to your point Tim, a good portion of the audience seemed to appreciate this ending reminding us that we are all not from this rock that we currently settle on - was it guilt? A need to cheer for something bigger than our collective selves - I don’t know, but it just felt forced.

Emily: It felt like the show had walked itself into a corner. It made this whole point that this is a story where everybody's from different places and we are not in England. We are in New Orleans. But in the original, the final number repeats the line “for he is an Englishman” over and over. By so intentionally setting the musical in New Orleans, you have to figure out what to do. Something that's been  hitting me with every ‘historical musical’ I see is like…where's the dramaturg? Someone to sit down with Holmes and Ellis and say, “What exactly did you mean by this?”

Tim: Can adaptations like this work when their hallmark is a very singular point of view that willfully sacrifices other points of view? Is there a place for them right now? Is Pirates! a successful version of that?

Emily: Have either of you seen a truly great and innovative revival in the past few years? I’ll always bring up Cats: The Jellicle Ball as a favorite for its equal parts smart and entertaining resetting of a musical about junkyard felines to the world of drag and ballroom culture, but I’ve also seen so many bad adaptations.

Karl: I loved Classical Theatre of Harlem’s 2018 adaptation of Antigone. That staging and the projection design in particular felt very specific. There was a point where you saw names coming up on the wall, like, George Floyd's name, but there were other names too, from throughout history. I appreciated the dramaturgical work that was done. As the names kept coming up on the screen, you realized, oh shit, you're being taken through a chronology of people who’ve been brutalized and victimized by “the law.” It was seamless. It didn't jar you. The moment was well placed.

Tim: To speak about revivals that have worked for me, I saw the revival of American Buffalo a few years ago and I loved it. I had been so ready to hate it because we saw all of David Mamet’s toxicity and the idiocy and how glorified it was, but they took the piss out of those guys. They were utter buffoons. If you do not include a contemporary lens, then you're missing the point of adaptation. If Pirates! hadn’t been so heavy-handed it could have been great, but the contemporary context felt like such an afterthought.

Karl: You nailed it. I wanted Pirates! to be more in line with what I think it was trying to say initially. And, then we'd have a different conversation about how bloody problematic it is, but it would feel more genuine. To give us an ending of heavy messaging of coming together just doesn't fit well.

Emily: When a playful story takes a sharp turn into something serious and relevant, it can blow you away. This felt more like a rather misguided amble around a curve, and so instead, my suspension of disbelief was lost, and I was annoyed. But somewhere in me is an 8-year-old who loves pirates and Pirates and when performers interact with the audience. So when the actors marched out of the theater through the aisles after the curtain call, I followed them out smiling.  

Pirates! The Penzance Musical is running through July 27 at the Todd Haimes Theatre.

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