Alan Richardson, Richard Russell Edwards, James Jukes, Ben Vivian-Jones and Richard Munday in Sasha Regan’s All-Male The Mikado at the Richmond Theatre and Touring. Picture: Stewart McPherson
Sasha Regan’s All-Male The Mikado continues at Richmond Theatre until 27 May, then tours until 29 July.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
It must be 60 years since I last saw The Mikado but the traditional D’Oyly Carte version was nothing like this so it was just like stepping into an entirely new show.
Sasha Regan, the artistic director of the Union Theatre, says she was drawn to invent all-male Gilbert and Sullivans by having to watch these comic opera classics being performed in a single sex school.
Her earlier successes with Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore have spawned this Mikado, the best-loved creation of those musical Victorian giants, and is yet another winner.
Instead of the formality of 19th century Japan, here we are on a 1950s English school camping outing transported to the faraway island of Titipu, a safe distance from home so that full rein can be given to satirising our outmoded politics and institutions.
My dear old dad was as unmusical a person as you could ever find but he loved words, the clever puns and unlikely rhymes which were Gilbert’s trademark.
He used to memorise the hit songs – there are plenty of them – but if dad liked something, this teenage rebel was determined not to. Thus began a lifelong aversion that has only recently been cured by the freshness and ingenuity of Regan’s vision.
It was bad enough hearing my old man going round the house ruining ‘A Wand’ring Minstrel I’ or ‘Three Little Maids From School Are We’, the incredibly droll ‘I’ve Got a Little List’ or the sweet charms of ‘Tit Willow’ and ‘The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring’. But actually having to sit through the whole wretched thing at the Savoy…
Now here we were at Richmond for the fourth leg of a 14-stop tour that started in Bath in April and finishes at Salford’s Lowry Theatre at the end of July, with Alan Richardson’s remarkable falsetto and top-register soprano as schoolgirl Yum-Yum stealing the show just he did with Pirates.
She is being pursued by Nanki-Poo, the Mikado’s son who has fled the palace to avoid marrying the elderly Katisha and is masquerading as a travelling musician.
But Yum-Yum is the ward of a tailor Ko-Ko and betrothed to him, so Nanki-Poo (Richard Munday, excellent) has to leave Titipu in despair. He does eventually get the girl though in this bizarre story of bloody beheadings and bans on flirting.
Alex Weatherhill is a vocally brilliant Katisha in his one solo ‘Alone, and Yet Alive’ and in duet with Ko-Ko (‘There is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast’), the man she has to settle for in the end.
David McKechnie’s strongly-drawn Ko-Ko has earlier turned into Lord High Executioner, working with Ross Finnie’s Pooh-Bah, who is Lord High Everything Else.
The Mikado himself (James Waud) doesn’t appear until Act II, checking up on why there have been no executions in Titipu. If one isn’t arranged in a month, he threatens severe repercussions. Unfortunately, Ko-Ko is next in line to be executed but manages to dodge that one.
The other name parts are taken by Benjamin Vivian-Jones, Jamie Jukes and Richard Russell Edwards, and there are some sublime, balletic dance routines from the ensemble – full credit to choreographer Holly Hughes.
There’s no danger of the band overpowering the singers because there isn’t one, musical director Richard Baker’s piano the lone and perfectly adequate accompaniment.
Simplicity is also the key to the set – three tents that light up at night in front of a backdrop of tall, black, rather elegant trees – in a show that could easily veer towards camp and go over the top but is mercifully played straight.
Initially, I found Act I a bit too wordy – I was half-expecting some topical rewrite in “the never would be missed” section of the list song, but Gilbert’s cutting barbs were honourably preserved – and the sharper Act II sent everyone home with smiles on their faces, all good fun and well worth a visit.
Jeremy Chapman
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