Word: gilberte
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...Shaw) was clearly inadequate in places--she sang sweetly, but without sufficient strength. Most of the others were better suited to their roles--Ko-Ko (Dennis Crowley), Lord High Executioner, was the most enjoyable portrayal of the production; Crowley wrung the most drama out of his role, remembering that Gilbert's words are as important as Sullivan's music and usually funnier. Crowley has the best Gilbert and Sullivan voice in the cast, a compound of condescension and donnish befuddlement, and it's unfortunate he didn't have the chance to perform a patter song...
...most successful recent performance in such a difficult, unrewarding role. Pooh-Bah (Scott Moe) was well performed, but not as satisfactory; like Peter Rogers's unfortunate Mikado and Crowley's otherwise fine Ko-Ko, his portrayal suffered from too much of an unctiousness that makes Gilbert and Sullivan seem like effete tomfoolery, overbred "veddy British" knockabout farce, instead of satirical light opera of the highest order...
...Victorian Society of Boston, some of whom were decked out in capes and purple silk cravats and false moustaches. The orchestra played "God Save the King" before the curtain went up--an affectation, but a high-spirited one. Even an uncolorful production can't frustrate an audience of Gilbert and Sullivan-ophiles intent on enjoying themselves. But such a production does limit the real fun to those who can compensate for its limitation with their memories of other productions, their knowledge of the libretto and their sympathy for the material...
...this production won't gain Gilbert and Sullivan any new admirers, particularly since The Mikado's theme (almost alone among Gilbert's plots) deals with more than minor, absurd social issues of the Victorian age, such as cleaning up salty language (Pinafore), Walter Pater-style aestheticism (Patience), and the House of Lords (Iolanthe). The Mikado, like some of Shakespearian and Johnsonian comedy, is about the impossibility and immorality of repressing the passions. It is the play in which Gilbert moves farthest away from the Victorian center he usually represented and comes closest to criticizing society as well as ridiculing social...
...Gilbert and Sullivan aren't great enough to keep a Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Society alive by themselves. The society has to continually exercise its imagination and keep its technical activities at the highest level of proficiency in order to keep G & S worth seeing again and again. This means taking Gilbert and Sullivan more seriously, as if they really were worth spending a lot of time and energy thinking about and producing. This production of The Mikado seems vaguely ashamed of itself; its hesitance is the product of defensiveness. Director Lindsay Davis contents himself with drabness in order...