The Mikado: the director's cut

[calimac]

Lyric Theatre is the San Jose Gilbert and Sullivan Society. They're not as bad as their embarrassing web site might suggest, but over the years their productions have been maddeningly inconsistent, ranging from a brilliant 1960s recostuming of Patience to a clumsy Mikado whose Katisha had no voice whatever, and sufficient blows of the latter kind led me gradually to stop going.

The current production caught my eye, though: it is an attempt to approximate a re-creation of the original text of The Mikado. Knowing the show well, I wanted to see what difference this would make.

First, of course, it wasn't an attempt at an exact re-creation of the original production. There was no attempt to restore the word that was deleted from two song lyrics in 1948, by which time it had come to be considered generally offensive. And perhaps nobody told the actor playing the Mikado that the blood-curdling laugh that he customarily emits between verses of "My object all sublime" was introduced in the 1920s: either he didn't know or he didn't care.

But most of the purely textual original was kept. The reference to the Knightsbridge Japanese fair was kept, even though Gilbert himself authorized that line to be "altered according to circumstances" after the fair closed and the joke became obsolete. A few bits of original stage business, like Pooh-Bah rolling over as he cowers before the Mikado, were retained. Several well-known quips (such as Pooh-Bah's "No money, no grovel" and "I don't want any lunch") which originated as ad-libs by early performers were left out, and were rather missed, but the big changes were in three songs: two that got moved around, and one which was longer in the original version.

In the original, Ko-Ko does not sing his famous "I've got a little list" song in his first scene. Instead, he goes straight from his introductory song, "Taken from the county jail," into the dialogue with Pooh-Bah about the costs of his wedding. The "little list" comes later, after the letter from the Mikado arrives demanding that the Lord High Executioner execute somebody. Ko-ko sings it as a solo, with nobody else on-stage, so the refrain (taken in the standard version by the chorus) is different. Most productions update the lyrics of this song, so it seemed almost strange to hear the original verses sung. But the singer remembered that doing impersonations of contemporary politicians in the "apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind" lines was the original custom, and brief imitations of Arnold and Dubya made appearances.

I don't know why the song was moved to the earlier spot. Possibly, because the plot turns on the difficulty of finding a candidate for execution, it seemed a little odd to have that discussion immediately preceded by a song describing the many people who "never would be missed."

The other song that was moved was Yum-Yum's big solo, "The sun whose rays." This now appears in the second act, but originally it was in the first act, between the girls' introductory scene and her love interview with Nanki-Poo. This latter scene ends with a song by him to her, "Were you not to Ko-Ko plighted," which originally had a full verse for her to sing to him also. "The sun whose rays" was moved, and I presume the verse of the other song was cut, at the request of the original Yum-Yum. She'd found in early performances that the solo was too exhausting coming on the heels of her major parts in two group songs, "Three little maids from school are we" and "So please you sir we much regret."

The net result of restoring the original was to strengthen Yum-Yum's role and character. As made clear in the restored verse and a short soliloquy (cut when the change was made), she despises Ko-Ko and truly loves Nanki-Poo, but feels helpless to do anything about it. It really is better this way. I got a chance to ask the show's Yum-Yum, Laura Twelves, what she thought. She'd never sung the role before, but didn't find the sequence much of a strain. Rather, she liked getting her major parts over with early, so that she could relax and enjoy Act Two!

As a performance it was good. Nanki-Poo was very short, and his Yum-Yum towered over him (so much so that a line in which he is directed to let her head rest on his shoulder was changed to the other way around). But they were both strong singers and good actors, so the frequent G&S problem of insipid romantic leads was quite avoided. The Ko-Ko was a fairly big man, but he had a good line in cringing and groveling. Top marks go to the Pooh-Bah and Katisha. Pooh-Bah was quite large and was made up to be larger, and while his singing voice was relatively high for the part, his speaking voice was very deep and he came across as pompously as one could wish. He was good at both singing and the physical comedy. Katisha's ability to switch moods in her big second act scene was quite remarkable. Her impassiveness didn't melt during the "Tit-willow" song, it suddenly broke away afterwards. She did an extremely effective and moving job on her solo recitative and song, which are often cut.

Costuming was pretty standard imitation Japanese. Much fuss was made with the noisy opening of fans. Katisha and the Mikado both had so much facial makeup that from a distance they looked more Maori than Japanese.

If you're interested in tracing the textual history, see if you can find an out-of-print book called The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan, or consult Ian Bradley's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan from Penguin. That's Ian Bradley: no other annotated G&S covers textual issues.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Cool. And my dad just told me today that there was a good production of Mikado near him, so presumably Kerrville, Texas. Or possibly San Antonio. It was neat reading about the text changes -- not surprising, in retrospect. I'm still understandably sold on the CNU 2000 production, which I've reminisced about elsewhere.