This review by Adam Feldman in Time Out has to be one of the all-time best -a parody of a parody! Check it out:
This show is of a kind that I shall dub an operettical:
A British-Broadway hybrid that is cleverly synthetical.
It starts with operetta of the comical variety
That Sullivan and Gilbert wrote to tickle high society.
The Pirates of Penzance, a pageant witty and Victorian,
Premiered in 1880 on our calendar Gregorian.
It still is entertaining but perhaps not in a date-night way;
It seems a bit too fusty for revival on the Great White Way.
So Rupert Holmes has come along to pump some Broadway jazz in it:
To add a little spice and put some Dixieland pizzazz in it.
And thanks to these injections, neither rev’rent nor heretical,
We now have Holmes’s model for a modern operettical.
Best known for Drood (and also for his hit “Piña Colada Song”),
He hasn’t wrecked the story or egregiously forgot a song.
But to ensure the whole endeavor’s jazzier and bluer leans,
He takes the show from Cornwall and resets it down in New Orleans.
The Crescent City’s sass and brass have quite rejuvenated it
As Joe Joubert and Daryl Waters have reorchestrated it.
(They’ve also added melodies that never here have been afore,
On loan from Iolanthe, The Mikado and from Pinafore.)
With silliness and energy the show is chockablock, well-set
Amid the brightly colored NOLA streets of David Rockwell’s set.
And now that we have looked at questions musico-aesthetical,
We move on to the plot of this diverting operettical.
The Pirate King swashbuckles on a large if not momentous ship
Where Frederic, turning 21, is ending his apprenticeship.
And when this duty-driven laddie reaches his majority
His conscience will demand that he accept the law’s authority.
(part two in first response post)