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Lamplighters Music Theatre presents Gilbert and Sullivan s 'H.M.S.Pinafore,' Aug. 8-9 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.
Lamplighters Music Theatre presents Gilbert and Sullivan s ‘H.M.S.Pinafore,’ Aug. 8-9 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.
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Incompetence. Snobbery. Witless bureaucracy. Some things never go out of style.

But the obvious hilarity of a sailor with impeccable manners doesn’t necessarily resonate with contemporary audiences the way it did in Victorian times, which is one of the challenges faced by Lamplighters Music Theatre, the venerable, 63-year-old San Francisco light opera company devoted to the Gilbert and Sullivan canon.

A new, but not necessarily different, production of “H.M.S. Pinafore,” the 1878 two-act opera that turned the English duo of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan into stars on both sides of the Atlantic, kicks off Lamplighters’ 2015-16 season. The opera opens at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek on July 31-Aug. 2 and also plays Mountain View Center for Performing Arts (Aug. 8-9), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (Aug. 14-16) and Livermore’s Bankhead Theater (Aug. 22-23).

Sticking with tradition

Considering that Lamplighters presented “Pinafore” only four years ago, one might expect the company to offer a boldly re-imagined production, say, setting the farcical shipboard romance in the midst of the First Opium War, or the Suez Crisis. But that’s not Lamplighters’ style. Under the direction of company veteran Phil Lowery — he directed Lamplighters’ recent production of “Candide” — “Pinafore” unfolds with the same scenery, songs and costumes as the 2011 production.

“When I direct for other companies, I might recast a play in a different period or be freer in the interpretation,” Lowery says. “But in Lamplighters, we consider ourselves the standard of what Gilbert and Sullivan should look and sound like. We really play it straight.”

Playing it straight doesn’t mean performing by rote, however. Lowery’s love of Gilbert and Sullivan means doing everything possible to make the 19th-century world of “Pinafore” come alive for audiences and actors who might very well curse like sailors themselves.

“The idea of a ship with sailors too polite to swear was hilarious,” Lowery says. “I’m trying to go back in and find those moments and make them alive to audiences today. Part of it is reminding the cast that the idea of polite sailors, sailors who bowed when ladies came on board, was very funny itself.”

A commitment to the letter of Gilbert and Sullivan can also pay unexpected creative dividends. By digging into the G & S archives (which happen to be housed in Boise State University’s Department of Mathematics — who knew?) and other online sources, Lowery has found dialogue that was dropped from the original D’Oyly Carte production that opens up the role of Cousin Hebe (played in this production by Cabiria Jacobsen).

When a key actor was replaced a week before “Pinafore” premiered in 1878, Gilbert cut the lines because the replacement wasn’t well versed in the naturalistic acting style that came to define the duo’s topsy-turvy universe. Rather than winking at audiences to acknowledge ridiculous situations and actions, as was the farce fashion of the day, Gilbert and Sullivan characters maintain a rigorously deadpan sensibility, unaware of their preposterous circumstances.

“Looking back at the original production and what Gilbert and Sullivan had in mind when they first started, we found some dialogue with the character of Cousin Hebe,” Lowery says. “We’ve been restoring some of that material, and it’s transformed that character. Cabiria Jacobsen is new to Lamplighters, and she’s a hoot.”

A fresh look

Jacobsen isn’t the only new blood that “Pinafore” is ushering into the fold at Lamplighters, a company that boasts impressive continuity since Orva Hoskinson and Ann Pool Mac Nab founded it in 1952. The production’s music director is the 32-year-old Oakland dynamo, David Möschler, a whirlwind of activity who has made a name for himself as the go-to director/conductor for new musical theater works.

He’s also the founder and director of the Awesöme Orchestra Collective, an organization that holds open rehearsals to explore material from film scores and arrangements of pop songs to newly composed works and canonical classical repertoire.

“David brings a lot youthful energy,” Lowery says. “He’s very skilled and works in so many different styles. He doesn’t present as the old guard, but he has a great deal of experience and history with Gilbert and Sullivan, and he’s a good analyst.”

Indeed, Möschler cut his teeth as a conductor in Gilbert and Sullivan productions over six summers at College Light Opera Company on Cape Cod. After finishing grad school at UC Davis (he did his master’s thesis on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel”), Möschler reached out to Lamplighters to let them know that he was game if they were ever looking for a young conductor.

‘Taking a risk’

He was thrilled when he got the call for “Pinafore” and fully appreciates the company “taking a risk. I’m accomplished, but Baker Peeples has done dozens of productions,” Möschler says, referring to Lamplighters’ resident music director.

“No one that I’ve ever met knows the language and style better than Lamplighters,” Möschler continues. “You could easily brand them as traditionalists, but everything is a deliberate choice. I like having such a strong framework. It forces you to be able to really justify any musical decision you make, any tempo, or specific phrasing. What they bring isn’t a conservatism, it’s a high standard.”

Whether Lamplighters presents enduring hits like “The Mikado” and “The Pirates of Penzance” or obscure works like “The Grand Duke” (which Lamplighters staged fully for the first time last year, completing the entire Gilbert and Sullivan catalog), the company continues to thrive by letting contemporary audiences see how Gilbert and Sullivan shaped so much of today’s musical and comedy landscape.

“I think there are themes that resonate today,” Lowery says. “Pooh-Bah in ‘The Mikado’ is one of the great examples of an incompetent bureaucrat. Gilbert has great fun with the idea of people who rise to power who are untrained and incompetent, and control everyone else. That’s a joke that never dies.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.

‘H.M.S. PINAFORE’

By Gilbert and Sullivan, presented by Lamplighters Music Theatre

When & Where: July 31-Aug. 2 at Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek; Aug. 8-9 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts; Aug. 14-16 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Aug. 22-23 at Bankhead Theater, Livermore
Tickets: $20-$59; www.lamplighters.org