PIRATES ON STAGE

Rip It Up, Issue 110, 1 September 1986, Page 6

PIRATES ON STAGE

When Mocker Andrew Fagan set sail for Raoul Island earlier this year, he must have been thinking of ways in which he could mix his musical and maritime interests.

Now, the perfect vehicle has arrived — Fagan’s got a leading role in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance to tour the country this month.

That’s the operetta in which Linda Ronstadt broadened her career in three years back (and thereby gained extra credibility in some circles) — and one of the stars of that New York

production will be a leading attraction in the New Zealand production. Peter Noone,

formerly the toothy teenage lead singer of 60s pop band Herman’s Hermits, will once

again tread the boards in the role of Frederic. Herman’s Hermits split up in 1971, after a highly successful pop career which peaked in 1965 with two US No 1 hits, ‘Mrs Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’ and ‘l’m Henry the Eighth, I Am’. Noone then went solo, and dabbled at acting and television work. In the late 70s, he settled in Los Angeles and had some brief success with the rock band the Tremblers before joining The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway in 1982. Curiously, in old film footage of Noone performing during the Hermit days his voice bears an uncanny resemblance to the broad-vowelled poppiness of Andrew Fagan. CB