January 26, 2013
The Savoyards, a long-established group of Stanford alums
and students, came up with a delicious idea in their mashup of Gilbert &
Sullivan with the second Star Trek series. The role matchups are half the fun:
imagine the gruff Klingon Worf (John Graham) playing Dick Deadeye; the luscious
telepath Deanna Troi (Christina Krawec) as the luscious captain’s daughter
Joesphine; the stern Jean–Luc Picard (Graham Roth) as the stern Captain
Corcoran, and, naturally, the ego-assured Admiral James T. Kirk (Gerar
Mazarakis) as the cluelessly confident Sir Joseph Porter.
Operating on an impressive recreation of the Enterprise’s
bridge, the Savoyards took some ripe opportunities to tweak the concept
further, introducing the overture with the familiar Star Trek theme and the
voiceover “To boldly go where no Englishman has gone before,” and then showing
two crew members faced with the task of wearing the dreaded red ensign’s
uniform. Josephine sings “Sorry her lot” while holding a hot fudge sundae, and
the key phrase of “Carefully on tiptoe stealing,” “It was the cat!” is quite
naturally accompanied by an avalanche of Tribbles. Perhaps the most awesome
idea was filling the women’s chorus (sisters, cousins and aunts) with all the
alien chicks that Kirk made off with in the first series (and possibly a couple
of accidental daughters).
Though the singing was, well, amateur, there were some
moments: Krawec, from the university’s Opera Workshop, sang Josephine with a
lovely soprano voice. Graham got a lot of laughter from his Worf/Deadeye
conflation. The a capella trio of “A British tar” (Brian Chin as Riker/Ralph
Rackstraw, Don Pettengill as Data/Bill Bobstay, and David Skurnick as Geordi/Bob
Becket) was beautiful. Roth showed true commitment by shaving his head for a
dead-on Picard look. Mazarakis did an able job with “When I was a lad” (The
Captain of the Queen’s Navy song), and joined Roth and Krawec for a “Never mind
the why and wherefore” which somehow devolved into a danceoff between Kirk and
Picard.
The only real disappointment was in the unfulfilled
possibilities of the Kirk/Sir Joseph role. Mazarakis does a decent job of
working in some Shatner-like pauses, but it would take a true magician to take
this joke to its ultimate fulfillment. My candidate: comedian Jimmy Fallon.
Through Feb. 2, Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University,
Palo Alto, California. (650) 725-2787, www.stanford.edu/group/savoyards.
