"The Pirates of Penzance" at the Volksoper
Spymonkey's Pirates of Penzance Turns Vienna's Volksoper Into a Satirical Circus
"Aaaah!" shrieks a voice from the prompt box. And with good reason! Among the underrated hazards of this profession, we learn, is the wardrobe of Emperor Franz Joseph. In The Pirates of Penzance at the Volksoper, he sports a kilt—and whenever he reaches an especially passionate vocal line, he emphatically plants his foot on the prompt box for emphasis. What a view—shriek indeed!
If at this point you're thinking "Huh?"—well, you've landed in exactly the right production. This staging revels in turbocharged, high-camp British absurdity, where reason, thankfully, takes a backseat.
The directing duo Spymonkey—Aitor Basauri and Toby Park—delivers a gloriously over-the-top take on Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta, skewering everything in sight. And not just the easy targets (like opera itself—every operetta does that). No, they lampoon stage designs, the monarchy, the Volksoper and its audience ("They're all over 80—they don't need trigger warnings"), the tired debate over Regietheater, and, fittingly, the incompetence of cultural leadership.
It's hard to remember when a production's first hour was this much fun. Even the slapstick gets its own layer of slapstick.
The evening kicks off with a welcome from the Volksoper's new director, who vows to rescue the house from "woke" directorial nonsense and stage a traditional Pirates. The way Marcel Mohab then blunders into nearly every scene—ostensibly searching for his assistant, Maria Ritt (brilliantly played by Katharina Pizzera)—is a masterclass in sending up artistic directors. Subtle, it is not!
The marvel is that the operetta already mocks everything itself. Take Frederic (hilariously portrayed by Timothy Fallon), who ended up at pirate school because his Swiss nanny, Ruth (the phenomenal Johanna Arrouas), accidentally enrolled him there instead of a private academy.
But this new production somehow manages to pile even more chaos onto the existing madness. It demonstrates the comic mayhem you can unleash with live surtitles; the chorus, playing policemen under Chief Bobby Stefan Cerny, sports giant sea-creature headgear (design by Julian Crouch); two eccentric great-granddaughters of the composers (Petra Massey and Lucy Hopkins) follow up the first act's gags with a second-act "Journey Inward" ("What does that mean?"—"My vagina"). And on it goes.
Even Katia Ledoux, playing the pirate chief on crutches due to an injury, turns her limitation into a punchline.
Under the Sea
What unfolds is an endless parade of clever ideas, executed by the ensemble with palpable glee for pushing boundaries. By the end, the Emperor (Jakob Semotan as a Franz Joseph-esque Major-General Stanley) is actually naked.
The jokes even extend to the orchestra pit, where young conductor Chloe Rooke earns enthusiastic applause. Nothing is safe from satire this evening—and that's a refreshingly welcome change from the far greater absurdities outside. You'll leave beaming, after the artistic director has fired a cannon across the stage and dismissed the entire audience.
