This insolent revision is cringe-inducing. Even its actors seem to think so; they cascade waves of sweat. It can't be just the hot lights.
The humour is a combination of Jackie Gleason/Art Carney and Sergeant Bilco. (Sorry if those mystify U.K. and Aussie readers. Just think "amateur," "1950s," and "awful, simply awful.") For example, to have the daughters played by fat girls (who at first I thought were drag queens) wearing plastic sunglasses, impersonating the Chordettes – where to begin? And, as another commenter has suggested, the idea that G & S need to be improved by having the Major General pull a punch of flowers out of his ass, give them to his daughter, and then urge her to wash her hands – well, once again, words fail.
There's a fairly colossal arrogance when the credits say "additional lyrics by ", in the apparent belief that Gilbert's were insufficient.
Yet it gets two stars from me. One is for the rubber man playing the sergeant; why isn't he splashed all over Hollywood, Broadway and the West End? He's a good singer as well as an epic physical comic. The second star is for the "Come, friends, who plough the sea" business. It's something else that G & S would have repudiated in horror, and it doesn't belong here (it belongs in a Dame Edna sketch), but if one removes the context, it's very clever.
The humour is a combination of Jackie Gleason/Art Carney and Sergeant Bilco. (Sorry if those mystify U.K. and Aussie readers. Just think "amateur," "1950s," and "awful, simply awful.") For example, to have the daughters played by fat girls (who at first I thought were drag queens) wearing plastic sunglasses, impersonating the Chordettes – where to begin? And, as another commenter has suggested, the idea that G & S need to be improved by having the Major General pull a punch of flowers out of his ass, give them to his daughter, and then urge her to wash her hands – well, once again, words fail.
There's a fairly colossal arrogance when the credits say "additional lyrics by ", in the apparent belief that Gilbert's were insufficient.
Yet it gets two stars from me. One is for the rubber man playing the sergeant; why isn't he splashed all over Hollywood, Broadway and the West End? He's a good singer as well as an epic physical comic. The second star is for the "Come, friends, who plough the sea" business. It's something else that G & S would have repudiated in horror, and it doesn't belong here (it belongs in a Dame Edna sketch), but if one removes the context, it's very clever.