Word: poo
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...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...
...production might easily have been allowed to ride on the abilities of a few, letting mediocrity slide by around the edges. Fortunately, that isn't an issue here; each of the central players demonstrate a startlingly high level of energy. As the young romantic protagonists Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo, Yamakawa and Shuman are thoroughly engaging, projecting the strange blend of world-wisdom and innocence that make Gilbert and Sullivan's heroes so appealing--by the time he's finished his introductory song, "A Wandering Minstrel I," Shuman has won us over. Siemens's Ko-Ko is thoroughly annoying...
...executioner. Managing to make one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most enduring and well-known characters unusually likable, Mills retains the character's indispensable stuffiness: "I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmic primordial atomic globule," Pooh-Bah sniffs genially, as he explains his haughtiness to Nanki-Poo and the audience. "Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable...
...show's finest performances, though, is arguably not comic at all: Katisha, the ferocious would-be bride of Nanki-Poo, is played with both delicious villainy and a surprisingly subtle range of emotions by Tuesday Rupp. Bloodthirsty and terrified of her own encroaching old age, Katisha first appears in a 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...
...here Sheinberg and Pollock may slip into melancholia: virtually all Universal's megamovies of the past 20 years-including Jaws and Hollywood's all-time champ, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial-were directed or produced by Steven Spielberg, who last fall decided to form an independent multimedia company with fellow Poo-Bahs Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen...