Word: katisha
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Most of the cast fill their roles with 18th century gusto. Teresa Toulouse, for example, combines the vengefulness of Gilbert and Sullivan's jilted Katisha with the coarse bumptiousness of Eliza the Flower Girl in her characterization of Lucy Lockit, Polly Peachum's rival for the love of the unfaithful highwayman Macheath. Joanna Blum as Mrs. Peachum also plays her role to the hit. Unscrupulous and unmarried, she jerks around the stage, hands on hips, spitting out cynical asides to the audience...
...small orchestra plays with evident relish and generally does a good job. It overpowers the singers at times, but this seems to be the fault of the cast--even when they were given ample room by the orchestra, many singers fail to take advantage of it. Katisha (Marcia Ragonetti) had one of the best voices in the company, but she was miscast if she wasn't willing to put aside some of the beauty of her voice and simply bellow out her lines. And Yum-Yum (Deborah Shaw) was clearly inadequate in places--she sang sweetly, but without sufficient strength...
...Their Gifts Allot," perhaps the show's wittiest number. This was not the only bit of business that came off--the tableau effects during "The criminal cried" were excellent, and the ruffling and unruffling of large gold foil fans during "A More Humane Mikado" nearly stopped the show. And Katisha's new image as an angular, sympathetic giantess instead of a short, fat grouch worked well as one of the few departures from convention among the characterizations...
Almost nowhere did Skolnik play it safe. The dialogue is riddled with puns the author would have choked on. Lover's sighs become hyennaic giggles and Ko-ko, the Lord High Executioner, climbed half-way up the balcony before he told the irascible Katisha to "shrink not from...
...rest of the cast, at least through the first act, supported these two quite well. Michael Campbell as Nanki-poo and Deborah Strong as Yum-yum made clear voiced, well coordinated lovers, and Nancy Sproul's contralto Katisha was vibrant, if somewhat unintelligible when she didn't face the audience. Although the women's chorus was weak, they were offset by an orchestra that finished splendidly. The pace was much too slow in the second act--perhaps because everyone was a little tired from the fun that preceded...