"And a very good Pinafore, too!" Summer Savoyards celebrate 56th season.

Perhaps no theatrical creators have inspired aficionados, have been so gleefully enthusiastic -- and as widespread for so long -- as Gilbert and Sullivan. Since 1961 Binghamton, has boasted its own full theatre company dedicated to the comical productions on which the composer A. S. Sullivan and the playwright/lyricist W. S. Gilbert collaborated, and this year on the 15th to 17th of July at Binghamton University’s Anderson Center, the Summer Savoyards will celebrate their 56th season with a fully-mounted production of the pair’s perennially-beloved 1878 piece H.M.S Pinafore; or, The Lass that Loved a Sailor.

Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan’s first of many great successes, and made them undisputed masters of an entire theatrical form -- the operetta, or comic opera.

Positioned in time and in form between the grandeur of Italian-style classical opera and the lightness of modern musical theatre, the operetta turned out to be a perfect vehicle in which for Sullivan to display his versatility as a composer of unforgettable melodies, and for Gilbert to exploit farcical storylines and display a joyful wit contemporaneous with Jerome K. Jerome and Oscar Wilde.

The situation on which the story hangs is neatly summarized by soprano Jana Kucera: “I’m playing Josephine. She’s the daughter of the captain. And she, unbeknownst to anybody else, has fallen in love with another sailor on board the ship. But she doesn’t know that this sailor also loves her, so they’re both secretly in love with one another.”

It’s more than enough on which to hang a series of comical confusions and musical delights. For Kucera, who is in her tenth year with the Savoyards (and had understudied the same role with them years before), it’s just as much an opportunity to develop as performer and an artist. “The last time I think I approached it more from a singer’s perspective,” she explains, “and I think now at the point I am in my life, having done more straight plays has led me to approaching it from more of an actor’s standpoint. There is way more playing on my part, which I think is awesome. Last time I think it was the first year that I was doing my masters in Binghamton, and I was more scared of doing it -- even as just an understudy. Whereas this time I’m ready to plow through it and have fun. And play. I definitely would say ‘play’ isthe big word.”

That combination of playfully comic and absurd elements with very serious musical challenges has always presented performers of Gilbert and Sullivan with a significant task, and Kucera credits this production’s director, Tim Mollen, with meeting that task. Mollen, a prominent local personality also known for his acting and writing, emphasized the humorous performance aspects of the piece, says Kucera: “I think with Tim’s direction there’s more dedication to the actual comedy of the show, and more nuances to comedic timing and how silly it really is. Because it really is very silly! There are some over-dramaticisms which are being played up quite a bit -- at least by me!”

For other performers, real-life experiences can inform their onstage personae. Baritone Dylan Ruffo serves both as Chairman of the Board of the Savoyards as in the role of Captain Corcoran in this year’s production, and for him, “Coming at it from an interpretation standpoint, the captain and the chairman of the board are in the same line. We’ve both got organizations underneath us that are really great. But sometimes the captain of the Pinafore gets a little more frustrated than I would in real life! So key to my role as captain has been being able to express my anger a little bit onstage -- though definitely not directed at anybody in real life!”

But for Ruffo, who recently caught the bug of rabid Gilbert and Sullivan fandom, promoting and strengthening Binghamton’s own company dedicated to them is at least as important as his performance. And he comes to it with the enthusiasm of a new enthusiast. “I actually was not a really big Gilbert and Sullivan fan until last year when we did The Mikado,” he explains. “It’s more than just music. It’s the words, it’s the story that they’re trying to tell. It all comes together. It’s collaboration. You couldn’t have one without the other, and you wouldn’t want one without the other. I haven’t always been a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, but I am a convert and I don’t think I’ll go back!”

Ruffo explains his mission as Chairman as essentially one of sharing the joy of his own enthusiasm for the work of the two Victorian operettists: “My main focus this year was grant funding, fundraising in general, and really getting more of the community involved in this production and in the organization itself,” he says.

“We’re trying to get a younger audience. We want to encourage people either to come on stage or to be in the audience so that they also experience that captivated feeling where you can’t look away, and you just want to take part in it.”

And central to that mission will be the current production, a fully-costumed and staged performance which Ruffo also praises for an original set that deviates productively from the traditional Pinafore that sets are used to seeing: “In traditional productions, you can see the whole ship from the side the whole time. But we just show part of the ship, and the deck out front, and that’s pretty much it. So we’ve been able to use that set to play with different interpretations of things. Tim Mollen has really done a great job at making use of the smaller ship space that we have, while making it feel like we’re on a whole ship.”

For both performers and theatregoers, having an established and full company such as the Savoyards is arare opportunity to be preserved and taken advantage of. As Kucera explains, “It’s kind of amazing to me that Savoyards has lasted this long, and they’re really one of the only companies that’s still putting on fully-staged, fully-costumed, full-orchestra productions of Gilbert and Sullivan. It’s the whole shebang. There aren’t many theatres that are able to still do that. And I think it’s wonderful that they’re still going after more than fifty years.”

H.M.S Pinafore will be performed at 7:30pm on July 15th and 16th, and at 3pm on July 17th at Binghamton University’s Anderson Center, at 4400 Vestal Parkway East. Tickets are $22 for general admission, $20 for students and seniors, and $12 for those under twelve years old. They can be purchased at binghamton.edu/anderson-center or by calling (607) 777-2787. More information about the Savoyards is available at summersavoyards.org.