2.1 Essentially a Farce

2.1.1 A Farce of Deceptions
2.1.2 An Opera of Two Capacities

2.2 Becomes a Novel
2.3 Updates

2.3.1 Red Mikado
2.3.2 The Corruption element
2.3.3 The Tuppenny Mikado

2.4 Nanki-Hal?
2.5 And for the attentively challenged.
2.6 Nanki-Poo Up - Ko-Ko Down

2.1 Essentially a Farce

2.1.1 A Farce of Deceptions

Andrew Crowther wrote: Sandy Rovner makes some interesting points about The Mikado [Section 1.2 above]. But, it occurs to me part of its charm is that it isn't bound to its own time as much as the other operas are - there is very little real satire in it - just Pooh-Bah and the two topical songs, which are incidental to the main business of the opera. Gilbert's never-never Japan is obviously a fantasy realm, which happens to bear one or two resemblances to England: its most important function is to allow Gilbert to invent some rules for it which will allow a funny plot to develop. One of Gilbert's libretti, Princess Toto, had this note about location in the programme: "TIME: Never - PLACE: Nowhere" - and this seems to apply to The Mikado pretty well. In this opera we're freed from many of the incidentals of the Victorian age - exchanging stiff collars and tight corsets for free-flowing kimonos. (I've a theory that these freeing costumes and the general atmosphere of pantomime encouraged the original performers to ad-lib more than they did in the other operas: maybe this also influenced later hybrids like The Hot Mikado?) Anyway, in this opera the central motives for the actions of the characters are the most basic of all: love, and fear of death. It's Ko-Ko's desire to stay alive that provokes many of the best plot-twists. The love between Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum seems rather sappy to me, but maybe that's just my cynical nature talking. The point is that Gilbert goes back to the elements, and so ensures that he keeps our attention from start to finish. (I noted in my thesis, still under construction, that it is only with the final spoken words in the opera that the plot is finally resolved and death-threats are lifted.) The Mikado is essentially a farce. In Act 2 Ko-Ko almost gets to the point of shouting, "Oh, my God, the Mikado's coming! Quick, hide in this cupboard!" It's a farce of deceptions, hair's-breadth escapes, spur-of-the-moment inventions, and running about - and all for the very highest of stakes. For this reason I think it's vital we should believe the Mikado is perfectly capable of carrying out his death threats.

2.1.2 An Opera of Two Capacities

Mike Nash wrote: Yes, here we have a farce that basically works. The story twists and turns, and although the "happy" ending of Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum ending up together for life comes through as one would predict from the beginning, there are a lot of rebounds off the cushion (to use a snooker/pool phrase) before we get there. Yet each step does follow on logically from the previous one, unlike in some of the earlier operas, where Gilbert tended to pull things out of a hat either to resolve the situation (The well-born babe was Rafe, your captain was the other) or to create a difficult situation (the 29th February thing). The weakest point is Ko-Ko's explanation to The Mikado at the very end, but at least it's still logical, and maybe it's all the funnier for being weak. However, I find a conflict of interests on Gilbert's part. On the one hand, the story is a farce, a manic situation-comedy. On the other, we have characters who are, if anything, too fleshed-out and human. One of the reasons I like Ruddigore so much is precisely because the characters are so starchy and stereotyped (and then they change and act in the exact opposite way to their original type). But we have in The Mikado a "villainess" who is really a sad and lonely woman, well deserving of our sympathy, and in Ko-Ko, a very real ordinary man trying to deal with an increasingly-impossible situation. This is what it is for an opera to have two capacities, and they clash, my lords, they clash! The farcical nature of the plot surely demands characters who are much more stereotyped, like a Japanese marionette. Or else, if you want to bring the human side of the characters to the fore, I find the setting and the jokey character names spoil what could be taken as a "serious" romantic comedy.

2.2 Becomes a Novel

Mike Nash wrote: Gilbert re-wrote the story as of The Mikado a children's book in 1911; it was the last thing he wrote before he died. It wasn't published until 1921, however. Arthur Robinson observed: Gilbert did the same with H.M.S. Pinafore - although I'd say it's not so much a novel as a "story." Rica Mendes asked: Is the children's book you refer to a small blue hard cover book with excerpts of the music here and there? I have a children's book that I thought was put together by D'Oyly Carte at home. Are these two different children's adaptations?

Andrew Crowther observed: Just to be annoyingly pedantic. WSG wrote The Story of The Mikado in 1909, and he did write one or two things after it, notably The Hooligan (1911). The book's publisher, Daniel O'Connor, wrote a Foreword attributing the delay in publication "mainly to the difficulties which have obstructed the production of books, especially those with coloured illustrations, during the last seven years." But we can see another reason in a letter written by Gilbert in 1910, quoted in Hesketh Pearson's biography of Gilbert. Offended at having not been consulted over illustrations, he concludes by saying "I must decline altogether to associate myself with the publication." (To refer back to O'Connor's Foreword, he says: "Sir William Gilbert accepted the project with even more than his usual geniality, and many talks about it with him will always be remembered by those who had the good fortune to be present." Yes, I'm sure!) The book contains some very funny touches, including the elderly Gilbert's sardonic comments on shortcomings in his original lyrics - split infinitives, lines which don't seem to mean anything, etc. He puzzles a bit over "Oh blind, that seest/No equipoise!" and finally concludes that "when people lapse into poetry you can never be quite sure what they mean."

2.3 Updates

2.3.1 Red Mikado

David Craven wrote: At a concert earlier today I met a G&S aficionado who started to tell me all about a set of records that her mother has of a production called the "Red" Mikado which, apparently, was presented by the ILGWU. The records are still in pretty good shape, but she would like to get another copy. Does anyone know anything about this production or whether recordings of it are available... (It sounds quite interesting..... ) Dan Kravetz replied: "The Red Mikado" was a sketch in the revue Pins and Needles, which was produced by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in New York, beginning in 1937. Most of the music and lyrics were by Harold Rome. The show was changed periodically during its initial four-year run, and "The Red Mikado" was not a part of it until 1939. Several numbers from the original production, including The Red Mikado were recorded. They were released on LP by JJA records in the 1970's. I don't know of any CD reissue. A 1962 commercial recording of Pins and Needles, featuring Barbra Streisand, is on a Sony CD, but The Red Mikado wasn't one of the selections recorded in 1962. There is another song in Pins and Needles called "Four Little Angels Of Peace Are We," sung by actors portraying Hitler, Mussolini and others. The title (and first line) are certainly inspired by "Three little maids," but the music owes little (if anything) to Sullivan. Perhaps the sketch and the song made the same political point and were not used in the revue at the same time. ("Angels" is on the 1962 recording.) Sandy Rovner wrote: I believe that a song from The Red Mikado (an anti-Communist work, by the way) was used by Harold Rome in his Broadway revue for the Ladies Garment workers- Pins and Needles- before world war II. If my memory serves (I really was a very little kid then) the four little maids were Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Hirohito.

2.3.2 The Corruption element

Andrew Crowther wrote: My father was with me at the production of The Mikado I saw this week, and he said he understood the satire more than he did before. (He's seen the opera a number of times.) And that set me thinking about that aspect of things. Really it's set in the same kind of world as The Government Inspector - corrupt local officials, whose worst fear is that someone higher up will come along to check up on them. But Gilbert is really on their side, as Gogol isn't. It occurred to me that if a director was really set on taking The Mikado out of its original setting (and there seems to be no way of stopping directors doing this), it could very easily be transplanted into a Stalinist Soviet setting. The same kind of absolute fear of an arbitrary authority. (I've just been reading Shostakovich's Testimony, which contains a lot of anecdotes of the black absurdities of life in Stalin's Russia, and The Mikado really does fit in perfectly with that kind of setting, except for the frivolity of Gilbert's approach.

2.3.3 The Tuppenny Mikado

[During the course of another Savoynet discussion] Neil Ellenoff wrote: I am not interested on how Brecht would do Pinafore anymore than an exact recreation on how it was done originally (except as an historical exercise). He elicited the following from Andrew Crowther: Oddly enough, I was thinking of cooking something up along these lines myself, in a desperate attempt to amuse. The idea would have been that Brecht would have been urged to come up with a follow-up to the 3PO, and would have turned to another English opera for inspiration - thus The Tuppenny Mikado! A chorus of Nobles explaining in bitter verse the social, political and economic situation which they are exploiting for the subjugation of the proletariat - one can imagine all too well how the Pooh-Bah material could be slanted to Brechtian political ends. Oh, it would have been too dull for words - no wonder I couldn't be bothered to do it. But Neil replied: Actually, it sounds like great fun.

2.4 Nanki-Hal?

Ken Krantz wrote: There was a thread some months ago noting parallels between Mikado and Hamlet (the phrase "a thing of shreds and patches" etc.). This got me to thinking about my own preferred Shakespearean parallel for Mikado, and I make bold to note the parallel between Mikado and the Henry IV plays. Nanki-Poo, like Prince Hal, is a fun loving prince who rebels against the constraints placed on him by his moralistic father, leaves the court, and finds adventures among the common people of the realm. I don't claim that Mikado is in any sense a "version" of the Henry plays, and see no point in piling up points of similarity. For one thing, there are far more differences than similarities. The two princes' situations bear a certain resemblance, but Hal goes on a series of larks, with companions who know he is the prince, and from which he routinely returns to the palace. Nanki-Poo, by contrast, has been a fugitive for months, his identity unknown to all around him. There is no Hotspur's rebellion to reconcile father and son. Falstaff (in the text) and Pooh-bah (by tradition) are identified as fat, but what of that?

So if I'm not going to play the "Romeo and Juliet-West Side Story" game of listing counterpart characters and plot incidents, why bring the Henry plays up? Only because both make use of the figure of the incognito prince. Gilbert did not steal this device from Shakespeare (I have no reason to believe that he had Hal consciously in mind) any more than Shakespeare invented it--both had a long heritage of fairy tales and legends with such a character from which to draw in their portrayal. The incognito prince, like other heroes on a quest, is intended to win a prize or gain wisdom from his experience. We know that Hal does this because we see the sequel. He becomes a greater king than his father (we moderns may or may not agree, but by the standards of his and Shakespeare's day--the seizing and holding of French real estate--he established clear superiority) and he does so in part because of the common touch he developed pub crawling with Falstaff and the boys. Before Agincourt he inspirits his troops in two ways. Immediately before the battle, in the St. Crispin's Day speech, he acts the part of the literary warrior king as well as it's ever been done. But the night before he goes among the troops (incognito again, as it happens) speaking to small groups, even joking with them. A conventional hero king, trained exclusively in the ways of royalty, might give a rousing battle speech, but the former madcap prince can do more. He can go among his troops, with "a little touch of Harry in the night."

We don't get to see the sequel to Mikado. We don't know what kind of emperor Nanki-Poo becomes. But I like to think that, like Henry of Monmouth, he will surpass his father. He has escaped the rarefied air of the palace and lived among the common folk. He has seen the mess that an imperial edict (which seems such a good idea to the Mikado who decrees it) can make when an ordinary town, minding its own business, is forced to implement that edict. He has seen these things, and hopefully learned from them. His spell as a second trombone will, IMHO, be good for him and good for Japan when he succeeds to the throne.

2.5 And for the attentively challenged.

Mike Storie proffered this: Following is the "short attention span plot" of The Mikado that appeared in 1994 in the Seattle G&S Society newsletter "Paragraphs.":

"The Mikado" Book by Bill Gilbert, Music by Art Sullivan, "PG-45" - Mature sense of humor but virtually no adult situations. Sexual innuendoes include a lady "who dresses like a guy," some public kissing, a left shoulder blade, a left elbow, a right heel, and a bare right arm. Implied violence includes knifes, hangman's nooses, an executioner's axe, death by burial alive, a sabre cutting through cervical vertebrae, boiling oil, melted lead, a severed head standing on its neck and bowing to people, tigers, thunderbolts, and a suicidal dickey-bird. Parents - you have been warned!

The Mikado has the type of plot that would drive certain members of Congressional Committees right up the wall. If it weren't a classic, you wouldn't let your children watch it on Saturday mornings. It would make a wonderful vehicle for a video game - THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MEET MADAM BUTTERFLY. For those of you who can't wade through the whole plot by the time they dim the theater lights, here is a quick sketch of what's really going to happen:

What's a Japanese kid to do when his old man insists he marry an older woman? (Particularly if she's got a face that would stop a bullet train.) Add to this that father's word is law because he's the Emperor of Japan, that he's politically quite a bit to the right of Ollie North, and he's also into heavy discipline. For example, he has passed some pretty stiff laws to keep young punks straight. You can't even dye your hair puce anymore, or scribble on windowpanes, and don't even think about cheating at billiards. What he's really hung up on though is flirting! All you gotta do is wink at someone and you're immediately beheaded! I mean total bummer! Being fiscally conservative as well, the Emperor has restructured and rightsized the judicial system so that all judges perform their own executions, thus eliminating a lot of middle management fat.

The obvious answer, if you are inflicted with such a father, is to join the homeless and find work as a street musician. When the Emperor had his fun new laws executed (if you'll pardon the expression), a bunch of pseudo-intellectual town fathers in a burb called "Titipu" came up with a loophole you could drive a Mitsubishi through. Since the next guy on death row in their town was a wimpy tailor who go caught flirting, they decide to promote him to be Lord High Executioner. The scam was based on the rather thin legal argument that, since he was next in line for beheading, he'd have to cut off his own head before he could cut off anyone else's. This naturally stretched out the already lengthy appeal process. While living as a street person, the Emperors son, with the dubious name of "Nanki-Poo," falls for a local groupie named Yum-Yum. (I thought only certain Congressmen still got away with calling women things like that.) Anyway, their romance doesn't get far because she is engaged to marry her guardian, the above-mentioned wimpy tailor.

Now the bad news for the audience at this point is that even though I've laid all these plot details on you, the opera hasn't even started yet! The Emperor's son hears that the tailor has been condemned for flirting, but by the time he gets back to Titipu, the tailor has been promoted to executioner and is about to marry Yum-Yum. At this point we meet the all-time great role model for aspiring public servants, a bureaucrat's bureaucrat named Pooh-Bah. Pooh-Bah will do or say anything for an appropriate stipend - sort of like some Arkansas Troopers. He introduces Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner (nee tailor) who, it turns out, is now a man with a social agenda. For example, if you've got flabby hands and peppermint breath, you better hold on to your hat! (And anything you keep in it!) Ko-Ko, it would also seem, is one of those guys with a strong interest in young girls, all of whom seem to be suffering from terminal giggles. They really get excited when they learn that Nanki-Poo is back in town. By the time they straighten out what's happening, however, Nanki-Poo is back in the depths of depression.

As part of his wedding preparations, Ko-Ko is busy bribing all of the city officials (namely Pooh-Bah) so that he can get his wedding paid for. During all this, a letter arrives from the Emperor, pointing out that there have been no executions in Titipu for some time and they'd better get cracking. Suddenly, Ko-Ko is faced with the somewhat unpleasant and technically complicated task of cutting off his own head! His only way out is to quickly find a substitute. Naturally, at this point, in walks poor depressed Nanki-Poo with a rope in his hand. They quickly strike a simple bargain - Nanki-Poo can marry Yum-Yum tomorrow on the condition that he allow Ko-Ko to behead him at the end of the month. Then, as a widow, Yum-Yum would be free to marry Ko-Ko. This scheme pleases the townspeople and they launch into a celebration, when what to their wondering eyes should appear, but Katisha, the aforementioned ugly older woman! Although Katisha scares everyone half to death, they ignore her attempts to rat on Nanki-Poo so she storms back to Tokyo to fetch the Emperor and while she's gone, the audience can finally take a break

When we rejoin the action, Yum-Yum is getting ready for her wedding and having to endure only a few cute jokes from her girl friends about having her wedding plans "cut short" at the end of the month. Unfortunately, Ko-Ko wanders in at this point having just learned from his lawyer (Pooh-Bah - again) that the fine print in the Emperor's law says that if a married man is beheaded for flirting, his wife must be buried alive! This news, in general, dampens the spirits of the wedding party somewhat. Yum-Yum says, "let's call the whole thing off," and Nanki-Poo goes despondent on us again.

Meantime, Katisha has fetched the Emperor and they are just coming into town. Ko-Ko, assuming that the Emperor has arrived to see if an execution has taken place, decides he had better come up with one. Nanki-Poo volunteers but Ko-Ko still hasn't quite mastered his axe swinging bit yet. Suddenly he comes up with the bright idea of bribing all the city officials (Yep - Heeeer's Pooh-Bah!) into claiming that he had beheaded Nanki-Poo. In order for this fabrication to hold up, they have to get Nanki-Poo out of town fast. So the Archbishop of Titipu (name of Pooh-Bah) marries him to Yum-Yum and sends them both packing.

Since the Emperor is a great fan of the efficacy of punishment, the detailed description of the decapitation is well received up to the point where Katisha notices the name "Nanki-Poo" on the death certificate. This of course, means that the Emperor must conjure up a suitable punishment for person or persons who inadvertently kill the heir to the throne of Japan. He decides that something lingering, involving boiling oil and melted lead will suffice. While they are heating the cauldrons, the Emperor does lunch. Since Ko-Ko, Pitti-Sing and Pooh-Bah aren't particularly hungry, they find Nanki-Poo and try to convince him to come back to life. Nanki-Poo refuses since if Katisha discovers him still alive, she will insist on his an Yum-Yum's death. They finally decide that the only possible way out of the problem is for Ko-Ko to woo, win and marry Katisha during lunch! Thus follows a whirlwind romance, a relieved Emperor (he finds that not only is his son still alive but he won't have to put up with Katisha as a daughter-in-law), and everyone dances off into the sunset in their inimitable Japanese way.

2.6 Nanki-Poo Up - Ko-Ko Down

Ken Krantz offered this analysis: The Mikado tells the story of the rising fortune of Nanki-Poo and the concurrent falling fortune of Ko-Ko. There is a tide in the affairs of men and in the beginning one man's is at the ebb and the other at the flood. Before the curtain Ko-Ko has gone from condemned prisoner to high public official while Nanki-Poo has gone from crown prince to vagabond fugitive. When he enters he at least has the hope of marrying Yum-Yum but he loses even that with the information Pish-Tush and Pooh-bah give him. When Ko-Ko enters his fate is as high, and Nanki-Poo's as low, as either will ever be again. The rest of the opera works out the process of the reversal of fortune between the two men. By the end there is complete symmetry. The choice Nanki-Poo faced at his father's court--death or marriage to Katisha--is forced on Ko-Ko.

Consider this simplified chronology of the two men's situations as the story unfolds after their first meeting:

For me the single line that crystallizes this reversal of fortune is Nanki-Poo's "Very well then, behead me." This is the moment at which Ko-Ko, if he were other than as he is, could at one stroke (literally) have both Yum-Yum and his job. But being who he is, a man who can't kill anyone or anything, he lets the moment pass and, by deciding to fake the death certificate, sets in motion his eventual fate. From that line, and Ko-Ko's response to it, Nanki- Poo's success and Ko-Ko's failure follow.

The line is conventionally viewed as standard behaviour for a sappy romantic lead, and it is certainly consistent with his suicidal posturing in Act I. However, I interpret it differently. For one thing, Nanki-Poo throughout shows a cleverness and resolve unlike the stereotypical sappy romantic lead. Can one imagine Frederic or Strephon manoeuvring as adroitly as Nanki-Poo does throughout the show? Ralph and Nanki-Poo both plan suicide late in Act I, but Ralph, once he has decided on that course, just stands there looking silly, singing with the pistol to his head, plodding on towards the death that would have come but for Josephine's intervention. Nanki-Poo, by contrast, seizes the opportunity to turn Ko-Ko's problem to his advantage by working out the marriage- for-a-month deal.

I don't doubt that in his initial despair over losing Yum-Yum Nanki-Poo sincerely planned to kill himself. But by his second apparently suicidal moment ("very well then, behead me") he has gotten to know Ko-Ko, and to size him up. He has the chance to understand Ko-Ko's character, and particularly his unfitness for the job of executioner. After "Here's a how-de-do" temporarily puts Ko-Ko back in the one-up position (Yum-Yum is unwilling to be buried alive, so she backs out of the marriage to Nanki-Poo) Nanki- Poo again threatens suicide. He knows from Act I how his suicide will upset Ko-Ko's plans.

He may still be sincerely willing to kill himself, but he has to realize that he has to some extent restored the status quo before the Act I finale. As on the earlier occasion, he has a bargaining position because he has something (his life) that Ko-Ko needs. As he and Ko-Ko argue the point Pooh-bah arrives with the news that the Mikado is almost here. This adds the press of time to Ko-Ko's problems. This is the moment at which a shrewd judge of character might realize that Ko-Ko, with a little more pressure, could collapse entirely. Nanki-Poo is willing to risk all on a single throw of the dice. When he says "behead me" there is a chance that Ko-Ko will take him up on it (in which case he will be no worse off than if he had hung himself back in Act I), but there is also a chance--and a good chance, given Ko-Ko's observed character--that this final bit of pressure will force Ko-Ko into complete capitulation, as it does.

This is the crisis of the story of their interconnected fates and proceeds as it does because of the character of each man. The situation is set up by Nanki-Poo's willingness to risk his life and resolved by Ko-Ko's unwillingness to take that life.

Now, as to the practical business of presenting this in performance. I freely admit that everything I have written above may be lit crit theorizing that can't be made to work on stage. Still, I'd like to see it tried. I have generally seen Nanki-Poo's line delivered with a Dudley Do-right ingenuousness very much at odds with my interpretation. After Ko-Ko's speech about being under contract to die at the hands of the public executioner I would like to see something like this:

NP: [very deliberately, while staring straight at him] Very well then. Behead me

KK: [looking away, flustered] What, now?

NP: [still staring, still deliberately] Certainly [staring even harder] At once.

Then Pooh-Bah chimes in with the comic relief of "Chop it off, chop it off." and their exchange leads to Ko-Ko's long speech about guinea pigs and blue bottles. By the end of that speech Ko-Ko is weeping that he can't kill anybody. It is clear that the pressure is working.

NP: [more jocularly] Come, my poor fellow {Note the patronizing tone. He realizes he is in control now}, we all have unpleasant duties to discharge at times; after all, what is it? If I don't mind, why should you? Remember [resuming the forceful, deliberate delivery] sooner or later it must be done.

KK: Must it? I'm not so sure about that?

With that Ko-Ko's fate, and Nanki-Poo's victory, are sealed. Nanki-Poo's next line "What do you mean?" can be taken literally-- he doesn't know what specific plan Ko-Ko has in mind--but he has offered his life, and Ko-Ko has refused it. By the successful outcome of this gamble he has regained, this time permanently, the one-up position.

For purposes of this discussion I take no position in the controversy over whether Nanki-Poo is a hero or a villain, and whether or not his flight from Katisha is justified. Whether for good or ill, Nanki-Poo is unusually intelligent and forceful for a G&S tenor, capable of taking shrewd action in his own interest and of manipulating a character like Ko-Ko.

Clive Woods pointed out: But surely if he really behead Nanki-Poo, Katisha would still have found out from the death certificate that he had beheaded the heir to the throne. Ko-Ko's fate is sealed much earlier, at the instant he chooses Nanki-Poo as substitute. Presumably there were many others on death row (or not) and he could have chosen any one of them with impunity, forged his death certificate, satisfied the Mikado, and Katisha would have been none the wiser. Nanki-Poo would have committed suicide and Ko-Ko would have Yum-Yum. Katisha would have been distraught at arriving in Titipu about 10 minutes too late to marry Nanki-Poo.

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