Word: ko-ko
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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...
...that that's much trouble for Steve Kaplan's Ko-ko. Kaplan, who assumed a full lotus position at one point, wound himself around the stage. This bumbling hero writhed, dived, lurched, smirked, and stayed alive even to the bitter end. When he was on the stage with Michael Sargent, the pace quickened and the laughter was ready for them before they opened their mouths. Sargent was Poo-bah, the Lord High Everything Else, a tall, grumbling hypocrit he portrayed almost perfectly. When he smiled a rare smile, he wrinkled every patch of skin...
Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado with some startling un-type casting: Groucho Marx as Ko-Ko, Helen Traubel as Katisha, Stirling Holloway as Poo-Bah and Dennis King as the Mikado. Color...
...Taylor's Ko-Ko lacked some of the vocal finesse that this role could use, but his acting was very funny. Alison Keith was again Gilbert's answer to Medea, (this time as Katisha); again struggling through the songs and plunging through the hamming like an old pro. Joan Rosenstock contributed some more pleasant singing, and William Jacobson and Merry Isaacs rounded out the cast of principals. George Nelson and Barrie Wetstone handled the piano score ably, and musical director Burton Dudding kept everything going nicely...
...most marked change from the traditional Mikado--besides the increased importance of the onstage chorus--is the rather unusual interpretation of two of the principals, Ko-Ko and Pooh-Bah. Ko-Ko is, and always has been, a shy, introverted fellow, but Allan Miller a bit overdoes his meekness, with the result that we miss the slight hamming which ordinarily characterizes the Lord High Executioner. Barry Pennington's Pooh-Bah, however, is also a dead-pan job, but is so superbly done that it at times steals the stage from Ko-Ko...