Mock’s Crest Productions will present Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance in Mago Hunt Center Theater on June 22-25. Performance times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday – Saturday and 2 p.m. Sundays. Dinner and brunch will be served on the lawn in front of the Hunt Center prior to show times. Tickets are available at Mago Hunt Box Office and can be ordered by phone at x7287 or online at magohuntboxoffice@up.edu.
The opera’s official premiere was in New York City in December 1879, and it has delighted audiences ever since. Young Frederic, having completed his 21st year, is released from apprenticeship to a band of tender-hearted pirates. He meets Mabel, and soon falls in love. Frederic learns that he was born on the 29th of February, and has a birthday only once each leap year; his contract says that he is to remain apprenticed to the pirates until his twenty-first birthday, meaning that he must serve for another 63 years.
Mock’s Crest is a semi-professional company devoted to a yearly summer production of comic light opera, primarily the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. It combines professional singers and musicians with students, faculty, and staff in the Department of Performing and Fine Arts at the University of Portland. The production company was originally created under the guidance of the late Roger O. Doyle in 1990 with support of theater faculty as his production team.
For more information contact performing and fine arts at 7228 or pfa@up.edu.