A few years ago, there was a production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Not being into musicals, I wouldn’t have paid much attention, except that I knew it was being put on because of a large banner hanging over the Hamer Hall, part of the Victorian Arts Centre (aka the Arts Centre, which doesn’t really distinguish it from the hundreds of other arts centres in Australia). If you’re not familiar with the space, Hamer Hall sits on the bank of the Yarra river, only a few minutes walk from the city centre. If you’re heading towards the central train station of Melbourne - Flinders St station - or away from it, Hamer Hall is pretty much one of the things that you’ll see. So naturally, the Arts Centre makes a point of liberally applying banners to the building in order to promote upcoming shows.

What got my attention was the lead actor depicted in Pirates of Penzance. I did a double take, because I could have sworn it was an ad for Pirates of the Caribbean. You know, the series of movies. See, the lead actor was dressed in - not an homage to Captain Jack Sparrow - but a complete rip-off of the costume. Just in case you think I’m making this up: compare the Opera Australia production with the IMDB photos of the movie.

I didn’t think much more of it other than to tut my head at the design, and think how pathetically desperate producers are to need such a marketing ploy to attract audiences. But tonight, flipping channels on TV, I saw the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.) was showing a filmed version of that exact same production. I was curious to see how far the rip-off went and was saddened to see the lead actor perform: the famous Mick Jagger swagger (snuff taken in the nose and all, exactly the same as the movie), in complete Captain Jack Sparrow costume, with… and it really saddens me to say this… a completely Johnny Depp/Sparrow voice. Let me make it clear: the entire show was produced as ‘normal’, except for one particularly obvious attempt at getting audiences to associate a popular movie with an ‘old-fashioned’ style of theatre. And if you still don’t believe me, hey I found a Youtube video of the stage production, which you can view at the bottom of this post.

Just when we think Aussies will never see a major Australian musical onstage, we get this. A British musical, performed by Australians, with an American twist.

What bugs me the most, is I wonder what happened behind the scenes. Did the actor at any time question the director/producers at being asked to replicate another actor’s own performance? Did he revolt at the accent, or the swagger? Did the costume designer find it annoying to be asked to single out one costume for special ‘treatment’ (aka replication)? Did the producers or marketeers have to convince the director to go with it? Did the rest of the cast and crew just bite their tongues, because frankly, getting full-time paid work in musicals is hard to come by in Australia? Did anyone actually even think, let alone care, that it was a rip-off? And that’s just the list of questions off the top of my head.

You all know what I think of replicas in terms of puppetry, but this is a new one. Is it really ok to blatantly copy another character - voice, costume, blocking, in toto - just to encourage people to come see some live performance in this day and age of new media? Just how far can you go when producing a show to make sure it fits with the current mood of the target audience? And should we really be forcing designers and artists to fit into an audience stereotype simply because it gets bums on seats?