Word: katisha
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Schertzinger Mikado, adapted by Conductor Geoffrey Toye, contains no word that Gilbert, no note that Sullivan, did not write. A few omissions include the duet between Katisha and Ko-Ko, There is beauty in the bellow of the blast and Ko-Ko's song I've got a little list. Sets are far handsomer than any ever seen on the Savoyard stage. Sound recording is approximately perfect. On close inspection, cinemaddicts will note that the Mikado's story conforms strictly to Boy-Meets-Girl pattern; and that Gilbert & Sullivan have not yet been topped...
...Boys good-by at about the eighth bar of the first song, turns Titipu into a dance hall before latecomers are in their seats, makes Yum-Yum, Pitti-Sing and Peep-Bo carry on like three little maids from reform school, and finishes Act I in an uproar when Katisha busts in, no hatchet-faced termagant, but an eye-rolling, hip-shaking, torch-singing Red Hot Mama...
...where her father was a music teacher. At five she performed as Cupid in a church pageant, made her audience laugh by falling off a pedestal. At 14, under her stage name (borrowed from an aunt) she joined an itinerant stock opera troupe, finally got a chance to understudy Katisha in The Mikado for $8 a week. Eight years later, playing in the same theatre, she was getting $800 a week...
...best ingenue parts in the Savoy Operas. Gilbert, in a particularly happy mood, made them two pert, attractive little baggages with minds of their own. Tessa and Gianetta steer a refreshing course, avoiding the Victorian doldrums (insipid Mabel, elfish Yum-Yum) and the Gilbertian caricatures (whining Ruth, tasteless Katisha). "When a Merry Maiden Marries" comes off with admirable airiness and grace, and so does the romping fantasy, "'Tis a glorious thing, I ween, to be a Regular Royal Queen." The right note of plaintiveness without nagging is reached in Tessa and Gianetta's advice to their departing husbands...
...with The Mikado in Boston's Lyric Theatre. They threatened to head off the Aborn troupe wherever it should go. But after two weeks the Shubert Mikado, lacking patronage, ceased and desisted. The Shuberts had planned other Gilbert & Sullivan works but their troupe, now fortified with a Teutonic Katisha, will now stick to The Mikado...