Review: THE MIKADO, Richmond Theatre

With cultural appropriation becoming a hot button topic. it's probably easier to get The Mikado wrong than to get it right these days, but I'd suggest that most errors on that account would be the result of crass literalism. Like all Gilbert and Sullivan's works and despite the chorus's opening assertion that they "...are gentlemen of Japan...", The Mikado is about England, specifically the England of suffering fools in authority, of a language so flexible that everyone can communicate easily but nobody quite understands and of an old school populism that reflected the joy (and not the hate) produced by living together on a crowded island. Director, Sasha Regan, with her long record of successful G&S productions, knows this, so we get no "yellowface" but plenty of laughs, plenty of poking at the pretensions of our lords and masters and plenty of fun too!

This Titipu is no longer a Japanese town, but a summer camp, perhaps in Australia, complete with tarpaulin tents, khaki calico walking shorts and a log fire for roasting marshmallows. Into this rather idyllic community comes minstrel Nanki-Poo who is, as we soon find out, the son of The Mikado himself, on the run from his intended match with the grotesque Katisha, who arrives on a bike, looking like the Wicked Witch of Dorothy's dream. But Nanki-Poo loves Yum-Yum, alas betrothed to tailor cum reluctant Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko, who has the tricky problem of finding someone to decapitate in order to satisfy The Mikado's law forbidding flirting. Distraught at his fate, Nanki-Poo is carrying a noose to a tree to hang himself, when Ko-Ko spots his chance to seize a willing substitute and much merriment occurs before they all live happily ever after.

Not that the story matters much - as is the case with PG Wodehouse, a wafer-thin plot riddled with implausible misapprehensions and holes through which you could push three sumo wrestlers, is merely a framework for some high jinx with language and melody.

Song after song reflects the brilliance of the writers and the skills of the performers (not least, musical director Richard Baker, playing the whole lot on his piano). If the "Little List" is somewhat less topical than it might be (Zac Goldsmith should have got a pinging for sure), Alan Richardson gives a splendid "The Sun, Whose Rays Are All Ablaze" and Richard Munday and David McKechnie have a lark with "The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring". Of course, all the other favourites are given full value too, each of the all-male cast required to sing in two registers for male and female roles. There's even a bit of dancing too.

In as large a theatre as this one (as fine an example of a "Matcham" as one can find in London) there are times when the show feels a little underpowered, one's mind filling in the missing strings and adding extra voices to the chorus. But what one loses on the one hand one gains on the other, as the comedy and pathos are enhanced by the wonderfully intimate setting. Since one hears too many ordinary voices boosted by body mics on the London stage, it's rare to hear such fine singing (literally) straight from the heart (well, the diaphragm I suppose).

You can look for "the message" in the satire if you so wish or you can reflect on the historical tipping point between comic opera and musical theatre that The Mikado represents, but, perhaps, it's best just to sit back, as audiences have done for 132 years now, and simply enjoy the entertainment served up by a director and company who know exactly what they're doing and do it all so very well.

The Mikado continues at Richmond Theatre until 27 May and is on tour.

Photo Stewart McPherson

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