Original Director
Jonathan Miller
Revival Director
David Ritch
Original
Choreography
Anthony van Laast
Choreography
Revival
Stephen Speed
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
|
The Mikado
by Gilbert and Sullivan
English National Opera
London Coliseum
5 April - 6 May 2004
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
|
