Word: mikado
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...demonstrated himself as a hypocrite of the worst sort, insulting the validity of the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Society, cast and material both. It's true that Mr. Sellars was refused the directorship of a G&S production as an undergraduate: his subsequent poorly-reviewed production of an adulterated Mikado demonstrated why. But to hold a grudge against an uninvolved party because of thwarted aspirations of years before is not only unmerited, but unbelievable. How Sellars has succeeded (as some might claim) in the professional world with a personality such as his remains a mystery...
...eminently entertaining, filled with the usual assortment of rapid-fire patter, romantic solos, and melodramatic ditties by the choruses. Perhaps one of the least known operettas, it has an intricately woven, often convoluted plot that contains more horror and violence than standard G & S fare such as the Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore. This cast tackles the play admirably, cleverly filling the set with country dances, mystical developments, and mad cavorting by deranged characters...
...that blink out Sony, Seiko and, inevitably, Coca-Cola; NankiPoo (Tenor Neil Rosenshein), the wandering minstrel, transformed into a rocker with a red guitar; Yum-Yum (Soprano Michelle Harman-Gulick) in a flared short skirt and visor cap, giggling and jawing gum like a Tokyo Valley Girl; and the Mikado himself (Bass Donald Adams), arriving onstage, with all appropriate ceremony, in a Datsun...
...thesis: Automotive Metaphor and the Sound of Cultural Collision in the Early Work of Peter Sellars.) Sellars clearly seeks not so much to rejustify all these stage pieces as to re-examine them, even reinvent them, for a contemporary audience. What is up-to-date in The Mikado is timeless, but what is charming is essentially antique, brittle as a piece of porcelain. Porcelain is not the ideal material for broad strokes and bright colors...
...carry on like an insurance salesman who has been crushed beneath his quarterly projections set a pace that the singers cannot match. Whatever purists may have thought were its vulgarizations and deficiencies, Joseph Papp's Broadway presentation of The Pirates ofPenzance was all of a brassy piece. This Mikado is too fitful, too ambitious, perhaps-Dare we even whisper it, risking the rage of Savoyards everywhere?-a little too respectful. Crazy? More like not crazy enough...