DVD : Gilbert & Sullivan - The Mikado / Eric Idle, Lesley Garrett, Richard Van Allan, Felicity Palmer, Richard Angas, Bonaventura Bottone, Susan Bullock, English National Opera

Rating: - not funny
I love The Mikado, and I enjoy various productions' creativity with it, but this is the first version of it I've seen that is not funny for some reason. Lovely voices, interesting costumes. None of the characters were engaging, though, except Katisha. The makeup was bizarre and the dancing merely distracting. Very disappointing. Hope that director didn't touch any more Gilbert and Sullivan! Glad some of you people loved it.

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Rating: - One For Gilbert & Sullivan Fans
This is a fantastic DVD. As a fan of G&S operettas, this production was unique and infinitely enjoyable. The songs and music are faithful to the original but rather than being set in Japan, this production is set in the 1920's at a seaside resort.
If you are a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan, this is definitely one for you.

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Rating: - A fine performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado," in spite of its director and production design

SOURCE: 1986 live performance at the London Coliseum.

CAST: The Mikado, Emperor of Japan - Richard Angas (bass); Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner of the Town of Titipu - Eric Idle (baritone, sort of); Poo-Bah, all the other ministers of state rolled into one - Richard Van Allan (baritone); Pish-Tush, a gentleman of Titipu - Mark Richardson (baritone); Nanki-Poo, the son of the Mikado disguised as a wandering minstrel - Bonaventura Bottone (tenor); Yum-Yum, Ko-Ko's ward - Lesley Garrett (soprano); Peep-Bo, Yum-Yum's schoolmate - Susan Bullock (mezzo-soprano); Pitti-Sing, Yum-Yum's schoolmate - Ethna Robinson (soprano); Katisha - a lady of the Mikado's court who is engaged to Nanki-Poo - Felicity Palmer (mezzo-soprano).

CONDUCTOR: Peter Robinson with the Orchestra and Chorus of the English National Opera.

PRODUCTION STAFF: Producer and stage director - Jonathan Miller; television director - John Michael Phillips.

DVD EXTRAS: "A Source of Innocent Merriment: The Making of the Mikado"; downloadable libretto in PDF format; thumbnail cast biographies; menu and scene selection.

TEXT: The spoken dialogue is generally faithful to the version Gilbert wrote, despite a couple of pointless omissions and gratuitous additions. The usual silly updatings have been made to Ko-Ko's "list" and the Mikado's "punishments" song. As usual the changes add nothing to the show. The overture is truncated to a little over two minutes.

SETS: At the beginning of Act 1, a card appears on the screen to inform the audience that the show takes place at a seaside off the coast of Japan. It appears to be quite some distance from Japan, perhaps near the Isle of Wight, for the scene appears to be the main lobby of a large, mostly white-painted, very snooty, Edwardian hotel that is jammed full with English luminaries.

COSTUMES: The overall production design is consistently black and white with some dark gray. Even the makeup tends toward very pale. The production has been yanked out of medieval Japan and plunked down in the late 1920s or early 1930s, sometimes making absolute nonsense out of the spoken lines. Whether inappropriate or not, the costumes range from formal to sporting and are handsome and elegant.

TELEVISION IMAGERY: The television director, John Michael Phillips seems to be an incompetent or a fool or perhaps both. He clearly feels that he is required to "improve" on a mere stage piece by nervous cutting, irrelevant camera angles and superimposed images. Each of his directorial touches interrupts the flow of the show and is progressively more and more annoying. Throughout the DVD, there is a subtle hint of fogginess that reminds me of the Vaseline-on-the-lens close-ups of Doris Day in her old films with Rock Hudson.

SOUND: Dolby digital stereo without any particular bells and whistles.

COMMENTARY: This is an example, albeit mostly benign, of "Regietheater," so-called "director-theater." The director, Jonathan Miller, appears on the accompanying "making-of" piece, carefully explaining that author W. S. Gilbert got it wrong and that a hundred years of doing the show his way has been a fluke. At last the genius of Jonathan Miller has penetrated to the truth about "The Mikado:" it is NOT about the Japanese, but about the English. When I heard that, my reaction was, "Big whoop, Jonathan!" It is nice to discover that even such a close-minded creature as a famous and revered stage director can eventually work his way to what has been painfully bleeding obvious to audiences all over the world since the show opened on March 14, 1885.

In accordance with his great revelation, Miller has thrown overboard all the Japanese trappings in favor of ultra-posh, 1930-ish Englishness. Miller was so hyped up on this notion that he spent great effort in duplicating the accents found in early English sound films. (In the making-of feature, there is a scene right out of the old movie musical "42nd Street" during which Miller attempts to get his leading soprano to say "wuhlld" rather than "world." Just like Ruby Keeler, more than fifty years before, she repeats the line over and over without discernable change.) Miller is obviously quite indifferent to the fact that his re-setting of the show makes absolute hash out of the plain meaning of many of the lines, whatever the accent in which they are spoken.

Having now vented on the directorial concept, I must report that the performance is a good one in spite of Millers' brainstorm. The sets and costumes look good, the performers range from more-than-adequate to excellent. Eric Idle is the name star of the show and he is fine as Ko-Ko the upstart former cheap tailor who has been promoted to chief man of his town. (For hard core G&S fans, I must amplify that by adding that while very good, he is no better than such historic Ko-Kos as Henry Lytton, Martyn Green or even John Reed.) Felicity Palmer is a very good Katisha, although, I think, directed to make her voice too harsh from time to time, but she is made up and costumed in far too glamorous a fashion for a love-sick maiden reduced to boasting about the loveliness of her elbow and despairing of finding a new victim ... ahem, lover. Bonaventura Bottone is a remarkably and surprisingly fine G&S tenor, in some ways the real "find" of the show. Mark Richardson offers an unusually strong Pish-Tush, even if he is a bit over-parted with the basso-profundo depths required in Act 2. Richard Van Allan is OK as Poo-Bah, but I have the distinct impression that he would be much better with more experience in the role. Richard Angas in an astonishing costume, is visually impressive as The Mikado but not a great deal more. Garrett, Bullock and Robinson are fine as the three little maids, although hardly memorable.

The male choristers are made up to look like famous individuals of the 1920s. This is amusing at first, but it quickly becomes a nuisance. After all, if Lytton-Strachey and Noel Coward are there, why won't they step forward and say something witty?

This is a production with grievous faults for a knowledgeable G&S fan. Those faults, however, are not of such nature as to bother the great majority of viewers who simply want a good-looking, funny, well-sung version of a show that has plenty of good music and laughs.

Four stars, for not even Miller can stifle a perpetual source of "innocent merriment."

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Rating: - Flappers in Titipu
While this production was interestingly staged and seriously fun to watch, (it takes Eric Idle to remind us that "Oh bother the flowers of spring" is a euphemism for "Oh buggar the flowers..."), I suspect I am just too much of a purist to be wholly comfortable with this "Mikado". When I visit Titipu Japan, I expect to see a chorus of samurai at the beginning, rather than a group of seedy-looking Englishmen Making creepy "slant-eye" gestures at the audience, and people who look more like they belong to P.G.Wodehouse's universe than Gilbert & Sullivan's. Did I like it? In itself, it was a typically fresh-faced Jonathan Miller opera production, of the same quality he bestowed on Mozart opera some years ago. But then, this is not Mozart, and Japan doesn't cut it looking like the Miami hotel in the Marx Brothers' classic, "Coconuts". Take me back to old Japan - please.

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Rating: - Best Mikado ever
Great added(adlibbed?) dialog. Very good dance, chorus. I think I would have preffered the costumes from the original version better. This seemed soooo English.