Word: mikados
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Inevitably the strong performances of the talented leads drown within the boring and inane plot. When Ruddigore was first produced in 1887, the audience began booing and screaming "Bring back the Mikado!" After that, Gilbert and Sullivan had the good sense to trim down the play, and revivals ever since have gone along with these changes. But the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players have chosen to override these changes and restore Ruddigore to its original clunky form. They do a disservice to their own efforts and their talented cast by turning a potentially entertaining theatrical event into a tiresome...
...Mikado isn't Gilbert or Sullivan, but it swings...
Gilbert and Sullivan purists will hate the The Hot Mikado, at Washington's Ford's Theatre and apparently on its way to Broadway. Musically, they will deplore the conversion of W.S. Gilbert's candybox-pretty score into swing, jazz and gospel arrangements that bounce like the 1940s. Lyrically, they will ask themselves which is worse, rewriting some of Arthur Sullivan's urbane verse (one big laugh comes when Katisha, a scorned lady of the court played as a black street diva by Loretta Devine, screeches, "You piss me off!") or rendering much of what is left all but unintelligible through...
Linard, as the disguised son of the Mikado, adds strong vocals to the part of Nanki-Poo and his acting, suitably sappy, is accomplished...
...ultimately it is the men--Ko-Ko, Nanki-Poo (Braden C. Linard) and a wonderfully rotund Pooh-Bah (Skip Sneeringer)--who make The Mikado worthwhile...