Cincinnati has a boatload of local musical theater talent, and much of it is aboard the good ship Pinafore for a two-week voyage. Gilbert and Sullivan were the Rodgers and Hammerstein of the 1870s and 1880s in England, and their operettas still entertain audiences today.
H.M.S. Pinafore, or The Lass that Loved a Sailor, satirizes the Royal Navy and the British obsession with social status. The cast, directed by two-time Cincinnati Entertainment Award-winning actor Rick Kramer, includes more award-winners than you can shake an anchor at: CEA winner Jerry Rape is Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty; the Pinafore’s Captain Corcoran is played by David Shough, who has won multiple awards for shows in Dayton. There’s also Cincinnati Opera performer Tadzio Smith, a Manhattan School of Music grad, as steadfast boatswain Bob Bobstay and Dayton Opera performer Bree Hunter Sprankle as Josephine, the Captain’s lovely daughter. WLW traffic reporter Chuck Ingram is the infamous Dick Deadeye, and three community theater veterans — Kendra Struthers as colorful Little Buttercup, Samantha Toberman as Cousin Hebe and Charlie Greer as Ralph Rackstraw, the object of Josephine’s affections — round out the cast of colorful characters.
A chorus of nearly 20 more singers join these performers onstage at the Aronoff Center’s Jarson-Kaplan Theater for the merry voyage of the Pinafore. Through Nov. 15. $17.50-$18.50.
Read Mark Sterner's review here.
