Word: comicly
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They say that everything old is new again. If you believe that weathered saying, it might help to explain the shiny new face that director Jose Zayas and the Gilbert and Sullivan Players have put on their new production of The Mikado, one of the greatest comic hits of the G&S repertoire: neon-haired schoolgirls straight out of Japanese animation flirt with sharp-dressed business executives juggling briefcases and cell phones. Of course, some also claim that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And that's probably the real reason that this clever, high-energy...
Against such a solid field of performances, though, the show's standouts come from several of the purely comedic roles. Jason R. Mills '99 delivers the show's most delightful comic performance as Pooh-Bah, the state advisor who has taken upon himself all of Titipu's offices except that of executioner. Managing to make one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most enduring and well-known characters unusually likable, Mills retains the character's indispensable stuffiness: "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmic primordial atomic globule," Pooh-Bah sniffs genially, as he explains his haughtiness to Nanki...
...Augustine '01, too, goes beyond the call of duty as Pish-Tush, a secondary member of the local nobility, brightening the stage with manic clowning and energetically comic embellishments of every conceivable line and mannerism. And Jaclyn A. Huberman '01 busts out in the role of Yum-Yum's sister Pitti-Sing, delivering a hilariously physical performance as the tough-minded and aggressively sexy schoolgirl...
...show's finest performances, though, is arguably not comic at all: Katisha, the ferocious would-be bride of Nanki-Poo, is played with both delicious villainy and a surprisingly subtle range of emotions by Tuesday Rupp. Bloodthirsty and terrified of her own encroaching old age, Katisha first appears in a cloud of smoke and an attitude that brings to mind Cruella de Ville. But, playing Gilbert and Sullivan's somewhat enigmatic character to the hilt, Rupp injects a disturbing and note of tragedy into the entire latter half of the play; in the complex weave of The Mikado, this cast...
...Starship Troopers is sophisticated enough to recognize and comment on its own absurd, jingoistic hubris. We know this because director Paul Verhoeven punctuates his movie with the kinds of stentorian radio calls-to-arms familiar from World War II newsreels, and the same stylized "heroic" dialogue of '50s-era comic books and trading cards...