Last night, A Taste of Wilton returned, sponsored by the Wilton Chamber of Commerce, with restaurants and vendors displaying their foods for tasting in the lobby of the very new Riverside apartment building at 141 Danbury Rd. (We swear it wasn’t there yesterday!)

We took quite a passel of pictures of most of the exhibits, and you can see all of them here. There was no printed program or guide and since the exhibits stretched around the outdoor pool area, it would have been easy to miss some of them if you didn’t see people carrying foods you hadn’t seen yet.

We found that there were a number of out of town vendors with really interesting offerings. The one that impressed us the most was Tucker’s Pie Company, a Bridgeport company that makes savory pies (quiches, chicken pot pie, and so forth) for pick up or delivery. They are located just off the Black Rock turnpike at 2931 Fairfield Ave.

The pie that impressed us the most was their Steak and Guinness Pie, and their Caramelized Apple and Fennel Pork Sausage Roll. You need to order a couple of days in advance, but they are worth it. If you are having a larger event, they will ship you boxed frozen pies as well.

 Two Roads brewery (from Stratford) was there with several of their beers. We tried their Summer Heaven IPA and found it delicious. Not to be outdone, the Little Pub was also offering their own branded beers.

 

 One big surprise was Mama Hu’s Baked sushi. It is basically packaged sushi you can heat and eat. We tried their spicy salmon and were quite impressed. They have commercial kitchens in Norwalk and Brooklyn, and their products are available at Village Market, Walter Stewarts and Nature’s Temptation (Ridgefield).

  

 Jacob’s Pickles (from the Sono Collection) was offering build your own chicken biscuit sliders, with some tasty looking fried chicken.

  

 

 But the culminating surprise entry was the appearance of the new Sly Bandit Brew Pub at 14 Danbury Rd. Their display was just a menu and the opportunity for them to prepare a plate for you. But imagine! A Brew pub in South Wilton and we didn’t know it had opened!

Desserts were cookies from The Painted Cookie, Banana pudding from Pressburger (who were offering full single burgers as well) and carrot cake from Marly’s.

  

You will quickly note that there were far more vendors from outside Wilton that within. Where were our favorite restaurants like Bianco Rosso, Craft 14 and Aranci 67? Not to mention Athithi, Ren Noodle and Dumpling, Cactus Rose and the Red Rooster? Well, it was a great night for those who attended, and while the Chamber said it was sold out, we think they could have sold more tickets as it was never crowded. See you there next year and at the brew pub much sooner!

The Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Pirates! The Penzance Musical opened April 4th. We saw it last night, April 16, and it will run until July 27. Rather than producing Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, the producers elected to create a “re-imagining” of Pirates, setting it in New Orleans in 1880. The new dialog and libretto and musical adaptations are by Rupert Holmes, who has extensive Broadway experience, and the orchestrations by conductor Joseph Joubert and Daryl Waters.

The central conceit of this production is described in a curtain speech by two actors portraying Gilbert (David Hyde Pierce) and Sullivan (Preston Truman Boyd). They note that they decided to open Pirates in New York to attempt to obtain a copyright and forestall knock-off productions as happened to Pinafore. (This is true, but it didn’t work out.) They then describe taking Pirates to several cities, ending up in New Orleans which so entranced them they decided to make that Pirates a New Orleans inflected piece. (This never happened, of course.)

Without describing the show at all, you can learn a lot by looking at the orchestra. Sullivan’s orchestra was 2/1/2/1/2/2/2 and strings, or more specifically: 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, 1 bassoon, 2 French horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, percussion and strings (usually at least 3 first violins, 3 second violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos and one bass viol. That’s 24 and that’s the size of the D’Oyly Carte’s touring orchestra. At the Savoy Theatre, they added more strings for up to 31 players.

The Roundabout’s orchestra is 1 violin, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 bass,1 guitar/banjo, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 French Horn, Reed 1 (clarinet, flute, piccolo, saxophone) Reed 2 (Clarinet, flute, oboe, piccolo) 2 keyboards and percussion. That’s 14, but with quite a different profile.

Holmes and his orchestrators has transformed nearly all of Sullivan’s score into a loud, thumping pop-rock up tempo score. While several numbers have blues inflections and one a gospel inflection, the overall effect is much the same throughout. Loud. Most of Sullivan’s witty orchestrations are completely missing.

Holmes also reworked a great deal of the dialog from Gilbert’s witty subtleties to common vernacular. Gilbert took a great deal of care in constructing his dialog, where every word counted. Here is a description of Gilbert rehearsing Pirates in Philadelphia in 1881.

One of the strongest features of this production are the sets. The first act set features two New Orleans style two- story houses with balconies (Ruth enters on one of them) and the houses pull back when the Pirate King arrives on an enormous pirate ship. Beautifully executed.

The show begins with Frederic (Nicholas Barash) singing “Good morrow, good mother” from Iolanthe switching it to “good brothers” and it is in this song we learn of his forthcoming 21st birthday when he will be out of his indentures to the pirates. This is normally given to Samuel, but that character has been cut. This segues to part of “Pour oh pour” that usually opens the show.

Soon after that Ruth (Jinx Monsoon) enters on one of the balconies (to great applause) and eventually comes down to sing an up-tempo version of “When Frederic was a little lad” that explains why she apprenticed him to a pirate instead of a pilot.

Then and only then does the Pirate King (Ramin Karimloo) appear on the pirate ship to make his grand athletic entrance sliding down a rope from the ship, to sing “I am a pirate king.” Somewhere in the rewritten and barely audible dialog that follows, they establish that Frederic will leave the pirates when his birthday arrives at midnight and that the pirates usually let their prey go, because they all claim to be orphans.

Just as the pirates exit, the women’s chorus (all the Major General’s daughters) arrive wearing Victorian puffy dresses from the back, but open in the front to show that they are all wearing blue pedal pushers and high heeled leather boots. The lovely costumes are by Linda Cho, but I am not sure what she was up to here.

“Climbing over rocky mountain” has been revised to “We’re sashayin’ though the old French Quarter” and sung in the same pop-rock style.

Following “Is there not one maiden breast” by Frederic, Mabel (Samantha Williams) finally appears, and rather than a high (coloratura) soprano, she’s a belt mezzo. This puts her at a disadvantage in “Poor Wandering One,” because she obviously can’t sing all those high flourishes Sullivan wrote. It also makes later duets harder because her voice is much the same in register as Frederic’s.
“How beautifully blue the sky” was sadly cut. The pirates appear because they want to “marry” the Major General’s daughters.

Finally, the Major General (David Hyde Pierce) appears, the man with the best diction onstage and the singer whose songs have been least tampered with. His “I am the very model…” is excellent.

The rest of the act carries on much as expected, but where the intermission should have occurred, they add a new song “The ‘Sail the Ocean’ Blues,” based on “We sail the ocean blue” from Pinafore. This ends with the entire cast playing rhythms on washboards, each fitted with a store clerk call bell. Sorry, that is just silly.

The second act opens with the Major General singing the Nightmare Song from Iolanthe, here with the men’s chorus dressed in white carrying out all the actions he dreams. There are musical interludes between the “verses” to get them and their props on and off stage. I could have done without that.

Ruth has been given an extra song: ”Alone and yet alive” from The Mikado. Here I think the intro is beyond Ms. Monsoon, but the main verse has been turned into a blues number that works quite well for her.

We learn that since Frederic was born in leap year, he is not 21 but 5 1/4 . Since the show is set in 1880, that can’t possibly be true. That year was a leap year, so he would be 5 or 6, but not 5 ¼.

“A policeman’s lot” was sung just by the Sergeant of Police (Preston Truman Boyd) and the women’s chorus. They turned this one into a gospel number and this was really delightful.

“With cat-like tread” is very well performed and traditional, but without the missing Samuel solos. “Hail Poetry” becomes “Hail Liberty” but is also well-sung. “Sighing softly to the river” was cut, and the ending was changed. The pirates are not noblemen gone wrong, but are forgiven because “We are all from someplace else,” a version of “He is an Englishman,” performed here with the chorus each waving two blue and white semaphore flags. I felt like an attack of blue and white bats were in the offing.

So, overall, I think they have subtracted a lot more than they added, and the loud thumping rock numbers are rather repetitive. I don’t see any reason to have created this show. If you come to it not knowing Pirates you might enjoy some if it, but the music is pretty much the same throughout and Gilbert’s wit and Sullivan’s artistry are sorely missed.

“Pirates! the Penzance Musical” runs at the Todd Haimes theater through July 27.

I recently received Lady Bird Johnson’s recipe for Buttermilk Pie from History by Mail and had to try it out. This pie was made regularly by their private chef Zephyr Wright in the White House, but the recipe is from Lady Bird’s family.

If you look around the internet for buttermilk pie recipes, you will find quite a number of them, but none of them are at all like Mrs. Johnson’s. The single major difference is that her recipe has you separate the eggs and beat the whites into stiff peaks, and then fold that into the batter. This gives a much lighter pie. I also note that most of these modern recipes incorporate vanilla and/or lemon juice and butter to give the pie a different flavor, while the original Lady Bird recipe has none of them: the flavor is a mild custard with the tang of buttermilk.

This simple recipe comes together in about 5 minutes (plus the piecrust) and bakes for 35 more. Our simple piecrust recipe is here.

• 1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
• 2 eggs separated
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup flour
• 2 cups buttermilk
• ¼ tsp salt
• Cinnamon for topping

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚ F.
2. Beat egg whites until very stiff.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add the sugar and mix.
4. Stir flour into part of the buttermilk and mix until free of lumps
5. Add the flour mixture to the eggs and sugar, and add the remainder of the buttermilk.

6. Fold in the egg whites. This works best if you mix in part of the egg whites and then fold in the rest using a rubber spatula.
7. Pour into the pie shell and sprinkle with cinnamon.
8. Bake for 35 minutes.
9. Let the pie cool and refrigerate it. Serve cold, with whipped cream.