Scottish Opera, 05/05/2016

Gilbert & Sullivan : The Mikado

Chorus of The Mikado
Orchestra of Scottish Opera
Derek Clark

First things first.  If you live in the UK, and were perhaps thinking of catching this show somewhere on its extensive UK tour over the next two months, go without fear.  It's a very enjoyable evening.  And now you may stop reading, because there be spoilers ahead, and some of the jokes are worth experiencing without having been previously warned.

Onwards...

Of all Gilbert & Sullivan's extensive output, The Mikado is, to my mind, the best.  The libretto is sharply witty, it never descends into the twee, and the range and variety of the satire is exceptionally extensive.  As for the music, it's Sullivan at his most inspired, memorable tunes succeeding each other rapidly, hardly any longueurs whatsoever, and a pastiche of the Italian opera of the same period that is absolutely masterly.  The Act 1 finale wouldn't disgrace an early Verdi opera, yet the humour is still perfectly apparent.  All it takes to complete the equation is a well-paced and well thought-out production, and we were given exactly that tonight.

This is much the same team that created The Pirates of Penzance three years ago, in co-production with D'Oyly Carte, as is this.  Again, Martin Lloyd-Evans gave us a production that was broadly traditional without being old-fashioned, quirky enough to stay fresh all the way through, and full of lively, enjoyable touches.  The whole thing was firmly ensconced under the sign of late Victorian music-hall - we were being taken back in time, with gas-lights at the front of the stage, and the chorus wonderfully and preposterously dressed in a conflation of can-can dresses and striped bloomers (or black tie and toppers for the gentlemen) and mock-Japanese garb.  If the ladies had a vaguely oriental make-up, and the Mikado himself came on in full war-paint (but a Western admiral's uniform), there was no real pretence at authenticity.  On the contrary, illusion and stage trickery was the name of the game, you were acutely conscious from the outset that this was a performance of a performance, just as the characters themselves bounce around from one deceit to another in order to maintain their comfortable status quo.

And what an outset it was!  When the overture picked up tempo, the curtain went up on a magician's stage act, a variant on the classic sawing illusion, staged by what later turns out to be Koko and Pitti-Sing, and which goes horribly, if rather predictably, wrong.  It's not entirely relevant to what follows, save to establish the music-hall environment, and to set up the opening chorus, for the "gentlemen of Japan" turn out to be the decapitated heads of victims of the Mikado's stringent law against flirting.  It sets the whole tone for an opera that talks really very extensively of many varied and violent means of death in the most frivolous manner imaginable.

The designs for this production, by Dick Bird, are excellent.  Within the proscenium framing of the music-hall theatre setting, there's plenty of Japanese-looking clichés, but then there are the surprise images; the skeleton that descends towards the end of Act 2, or Katisha's arrival, looking like Carabosse wandering in from a production of "Sleeping Beauty" in the fore of Hokusai's Great Wave.

Rebecca de Pont Davies as Katisha
© James Glossop (2016)

Nanki-Poo isn't so much a wandering minstrel as a one-man-band, while the ladies of the chorus in the second act are all wearing the three plumes of British formal court dress.  The constant clash of East and West, applied with a deft sense of the ridiculous, provide a steady and unflagging source of amusement.

Again, as three years ago, Derek Clark and the Scottish Opera Orchestra provided lively and colourful support.  This being the first night, there were the inevitable little slips at times between chorus and orchestra, but it was clear that it was nothing serious, and they will get ironed out, sooner rather than later, and otherwise the chorus was in sparkling form.  If there was one thing that bothered me, it was a matter of accents, and it concerned Nanki-Poo (Nicholas Sharratt) and Koko (Richard Suart) particularly.  Sharrat adopted an "upper-class twit" accent in his speaking voice that was irritating (though he did tone it down a bit in the second half), while Suart played the East Ender in his speaking voice, which was fine and made sense in the context, but contrasted terribly with the very rounded vowels of his singing voice.

However, on the whole, I enjoyed Suart's performance much more this time around than in Pirates; he was more varied and more subtle, and though the role taxes his singing voice to a considerable degree (he doesn't have the volume of his colleagues in the ensembles), he nevertheless made the most of it to very good effect.  Rebecca de Pont Davies had a few intonation wobbles, but Katisha is a true contralto role and there are not really all that many genuine contraltos around; most mezzos find themselves stretched at the lower end of her register.  Her stage presence more than made up for it.  Stephen Richardson (The Mikado), Sioned Gwen Davies (Pitti-Sing) and Ben McAteer (Pish-Tush) all gave solid performances in their smaller parts.  Nicholas Sharratt is still on the reedy side for my preferences, but he was nevertheless a lively Nanki-Poo.  Andrew Shore started out with too much vibrato, but it stabilised, and his Pooh-Bah was splendidly smug, while Rebecca Bottone sang sweetly enough, and navigated Yum-Yum's artful innocence very neatly.

So, a genuine hit, I think, well staged, full of detail, musically sound, and altogether a very engaging evening.

[Next : 7th May]