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Original
Director
Jonathan Miller
Revival Director
David Ritch
Original
Choreography
Anthony van
Laast
Choreography
Revival
Stephen Speed
Cast:
Mikado
Richard Angas
/
Mark Richardson
Nanki-poo
Bonaventura
Bottone
Ko-Ko
Richard Suart
/
Eric Roberts
Pooh-Bah
Ian Caddy
Yum-Yum
Jeni Bern
Katisha
Frances McCafferty
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Coliseum
5 April ‚
6 May 2004
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This revival
of Jonathan Miller's celebrated 1986
production is the ENO's tenth Mikado.
It is a slick music hall romp sung and
danced with great panache on a delightfully
camp white 1920s set, complete with
palm tree, grand piano, sun, moon, and
giant cocktail. Gareth Jones' orchestra
sparkled, accompanying uniformly excellent
singing by a series of caricatures:
Frances McCafferty as a pantomime dame
Katisha, through three giggling little
maids, to Ian Caddy's oleaginous Poo-Bah,
transplanted effortlessly into 21st
century sleaze.
Miller's
central idea of removing all trace of
the Japanese setting and viewing The
Mikado purely
as a looking-glass satire of British
chattering society creates a perfectly
slick Anything
Goes style
musical. But for me, it detracts from
the absurd farcical humour and frivolity
of Gilbert and Sullivan's topsy-turvy
land (and belies the programme's extensive
quotation about absurdist drama from
the Marx Brothers, Noel Coward, Aristophanes,
and even Artaud). Ultimately I go along
with the 1926 Punch Review of Rickett's
1926 production: "There is no reason,
of course, why we should not re-dress
The
Mikado as
often as we like, for the sake of prettiness;
but Mr Ricketts seems to suggest that
there is some deep political significance
behind it, which seems to me to be an
interference with the liberty of honest
fun."
Maya
Lester |
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