This is the opening number of the show as the Pirates drink and celebrate the 21st birthday of Frederic, the play's protagonist.
I was in a production of Pirates of Penzance nearly 13 years ago. I was the lead, Frederic, and let's say that this was a fun production, but maybe not the highest in quality. The fact that I was the lead was the leading indicator that the talent was sub-par. We still had a great time.
One night, the production went awry. It might be a "you had to be there" kind of story, but let me explain what happened.....
First a little background- This was an outdoor production and the sound was really bad. So bad, in fact, that we went into a studio and had some of the cast record background voices onto the minus track during chorus numbers.
Also, I need to give a little background on the plot to clarify what happened this night on stage- The Pirates of Penzance is about Frederic, who is indentured to the Pirates until his 21st year. When the day comes he chooses to leave the pirates for a more civilized life. Soon, he meets Mabel and falls in love.
Later, it's revealed that Frederic was born on leap year. His contract states that he's indentured to the pirates until his 21st birthday and so he is forced to leave his new love to return to the pirates.
OK, so if you're still with me, this is what happened. There is a scene in the second act where the Pirate King returns to Frederic to inform him that he must return to the pirates. He sings a song explaining it. When the sound people cued the song- a different song entirely played. It was the finale to act 2, and it wouldn't stop- background voices and all. They kept stopping the track, and starting it again and the same song kept playing, with the voices singing.
We tried to improvise the best we could around this- I do remember someone on stage saying:
"I hear voices" and somebody else saying "I see dead people." (This was in 2000, right after The Sixth Sense had been so popular.) The audience was laughing, but clearly the performance had gotten out of control.
Next, the sound people cued a song that happened two scenes later in the show. It was a song between Frederic and Mabel. Mabel rushed onto the stage and started singing about how much she was going to miss me, even though we had never been able to do the scenes that explain why Frederic would be leaving. The song ended, I dipped Mabel, kissed her and improvised: "Farewell, Mabel. I don't know why I'm leaving, but farewell."
The audience was confused, and so were all the actors. The sound guy had no explanation for what happened. And now I'm writing about it here, and hopefully you're laughing about it.
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