Word: mikado
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They say that everything old is new again. If you believe that weathered saying, it might help to explain the shiny new face that director Jose Zayas and the Gilbert and Sullivan Players have put on their new production of The Mikado, one of the greatest comic hits of the G&S repertoire: neon-haired schoolgirls straight out of Japanese animation flirt with sharp-dressed business executives juggling briefcases and cell phones. Of course, some also claim that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And that's probably the real reason that this clever, high-energy...
...seems like an exercise in futility to try to summarize a Gilbert and Sullivan plot, but the bare bones may suffice. Our young hero, Nanki-Poo (Jerry B. Shuman '98), the son of the Mikado of all Japan, has fled his father's court in the face of his upcoming nuptials to Katisha (Tuesday Rupp), a ferocious elderly noblewoman. While disguised as a wandering minstrel, Nanki-Poo has met and fallen in love with the delicious Yum-Yum (Caline Yamakawa)--but their amours were frustrated by the fact that the tailor Ko-Ko (Paul D. Siemens '98), the guardian...
...play progresses, the plot becomes progressively more convoluted until even the closest of observers may be hard put to figure out, by the time we reach the obligatory happy ending, exactly who has been doing what to whom. But all this hardly matters. The reason for The Mikado's enduring popularity is not the complexity of its plot; it's the play's fast-paced, brilliant comedic development, endearingly ridiculous characters, unremittingly sparkling dialogue and clever patter songs, which include some of the best-known ditties in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire...
...when he seems to let himself go--as, for instance, when he cuts into a gleeful dance of selfish celebration during "Here's a Howdy-Do." And Erik E. Amblad '98, when he enters in Act II, is unstintingly and unnervingly unflappable as the cheerful, well-intentioned and despotic Mikado of Japan...
...cloud of smoke and an attitude that brings to mind Cruella de Ville. But, playing Gilbert and Sullivan's somewhat enigmatic character to the hilt, Rupp injects a disturbing and note of tragedy into the entire latter half of the play; in the complex weave of The Mikado, this cast of darkness works surprisingly well, lending the play an unusual depth and richness of texture...