A trigger warning for “The Pirates of Penzance”! I suppose we should be grateful that the weenification of Britannia has advanced so far, as we Colonists can now witness what lies ahead if we don’t get control over the culture and rescue it from the maw of The Great Stupid but quick.

“The Pirates of Penzance” is, of course, one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular operettas, written during the Victorian era when almost everything was considered a justification for pearl-clutching. I have directed the show twice, performed it once, and seen it, oh, maybe 15 times not counting the mostly excellent film version starring Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt. A child above the age of three showing alarm at this silly, satirical musical comedy about tender-hearted pirates who kidnap young maidens to marry them with the assistance of a “doctor of divinity” and the conflicted buccaneer apprentice who is the victim of a legal technicality ought to provoke a visit to the kid’s home by child services. An adult traumatized by the show belongs in a rest home.

If “The Pirates of Penzance” gets a trigger warning of even two sentences, the average Shakespeare tragedy must require a brochure. “Titus Andronicus” would need a recitation of possible PTSD side effect like at the end of a TV drug commercial.

Seeing symptoms like this makes me despair of ever freeing Western civilization from The Great Stupid. I fear that it is now embedded in the human species’ DNA, just as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the chemical found in Teflon, is believed to be contaminating every American’s blood.