St David’s Players present: The Pirates of Penzance

8-11 October 2025

St David’s Players bring the chaos of misunderstandings, false identities and infectious playfulness thinly disguised as a tender love affair to their production of The Pirates of Penzance at the Barnfield Theatre, Exeter this October.

Twenty-one years ago, through an understandable mistake, Frederic, the hero of the story, became apprenticed to a band of Cornwall-based pirates. These pirates have a fearsome reputation for successfully attacking shipping off the Cornish coastline. On the day of the completion of Frederic’s apprenticeship, a local landowner and his household come to the pirates’ inaccessible lair to enjoy a picnic. The accidental meeting of the two groups leads to a beach party, the scale of which requires attendance by the local constabulary.

This timeless love story features some well-loved melodies from the pen of Arthur Sullivan and is played against the mad-cap chaos brought about the delightful nonsense of author W.S. Gilbert. ‘A Policemen’s Lot’, ‘Poor Wand’ring One’ and ‘The Model of a Modern Major General’ are just three of the numerous gems amid the riot of cutlasses, truncheons and hockey sticks.

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