No 39 -- Winter 1992–3 Edited by Michael Walters
Sadlers Wells Theatre: THE YEOMEN OF THE GUARD Monday 11th May 1992; THE MIKADO Saturday 16th May 1992. [Also THE MIKADO on BBC2 26 December 1992, recorded at Buxton Opera House, date not stated. This performance ran for 2 hours and 20 minutes which is too long for MIKADO, each act should no more than 65 minutes].
I attended YEOMEN in the company of John Huston, who was visiting London briefly from Toronto. The auditorium was practically empty – to the extent that the balcony (where we had bought seats) was closed, and we were sent down to the front of the stalls! There we met Jonathon Hall and had a chat after the performance. I also saw Mike Ridley in the audience.
I hated the YEOMEN scenery; huge cumbersome frames of metal dexian which trundled inelegantly about during the action; the sections frequently colliding noisily and intruding on the music. I also deplored the practice of not having a proscenium baffle, so that one saw straight up into the flies whence the wiring, floodlights and other backstage impedimenta were painfully visible. However, accepting the hideous scenery (and curiously enough one did as the evening wore on), it had to be said that good use was made of it. The various levels were imaginatively used, and the performance was more than redeemed by very good singing and fairly good acting. It was off–putting at first to hear characters in medieval dress walk through skeletons of moving steel and talk about the solidity of walls of stone, but by Act 2 one had become reconciled to it, and skilful use was made of a large grid which descended at appropriate moments to give an imprisoning effect. At the end, Point, instead of dying, was left spreadeagled against this grid. This was by no means original – like some other effects the New DOC have come up with, it had been utilised by imaginative amateur productions nearly 30 years ago. Probably the producer had seen one of these and borrowed the idea? In some ways this ending, if properly handled (which it wasn't in this production), can be more poignant than the "traditional" ending of having Point "fall insensible", which reeks of bad Victorian melodrama. The dexian was also used in Act 2 to create inner rooms; thus when Elsie made her entrance, she did so from such a room, where she had been resting on a bed. The "when a wooer goes a wooing" scene was staged as a picnic, set in courtyard with a rather unlikely–looking toffee–apple shaped tree in a pot. At this point John Huston leaned over and whispered "I didn't know broccoli grew that big in the middle ages!" That really said it all, and the remark deserves to be preserved in G&S annals!
In 1976 producer Andrew Wickes had directed the same opera for Cambridge University Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Selwyn Tillett was in the audience and reviewed it for GG (no. 5, p. 5–6). Many of the ideas were apparently similar, particularly the puppets used for "I have a song to sing O". So much for New DOC's supposed policy of being absolutely "up to date". As many readers will not have Selwyn Tillett's original review to hand, it is reproduced elsewhere in this issue. The re–arrangement of the opera was curious. "A laughing boy" was restored, but "Rapture rapture" was cut. The dialogue in places was heavily pruned, but some first night dialogue was restored, as were the stanzas for the 3rd and 4th Yeomen, while Meryll regained the 2nd Yeoman's solo "This the autumn of our life".
Most of the acting was straight, and the singing was good, but on the whole there was a lack of charm in the performances. This was particularly noticeable in the sour–faced portrayal of Point by Fenton Gray. He is the person who used to be known as Alan Gray, and who performed and directed for Pavilion Opera, Brighton. (See GG 24 and 25). As an amateur he had a charm of personality which was totally lacking here. He had a hump, but this was not particularly obvious – neither was the reason for it. As straight acting it was one of the most naturalistic I have seen in G&S, but he was also the most unfunny and unmoving Point I have ever encountered. As a person this Point never once interested me, and as a result, his fate at the end became irrelevant. The same was probably true, to a greater or lesser extant, of the rest of the cast. Shadbolt (Gary Montaine) was down to earth and matter of fact, but there was nothing about him to make one care what happened to him. Terence Sharpe was a genial and kindly Meryll, but little more. Jill Pert most unfortunately came over as a caricature of Violet Carson as Ena Sharples (for the benefit of American readers, this was a former character in the TV soap–opera "Coronation Street") and was able to appear as nothing but a baleful old harridan. There is more in the character than that. Leslie Echo Ross (Elsie) and David Fieldsend (Fairfax) sang excellently, but were pallid characters. On the other hand, John Rath succeeded in making Sir Richard into a major role, and the scene where he interviews Point, staged in his study at a desk while he is signing papers, with secretaries in attendance, was one of the best in the production.
I absolutely hated the production of THE MIKADO. The same dexian set was used, but fitted with white panels which slid like Japanese screens. The chorus were dressed mostly in black gym–suits, or in black plus a single other flat colour – crude plastic shades of red, blue, green or yellow. (Primary colours – oh Titipu!). This had been slightly modified by the time of the TV production. The result was a mixture of drabness and garishness – the absolute antithesis of what THE MIKADO is all about, it should have charm and delicacy. (Is this a reflection on the modification of the western view of Japan, where plastics have replaced cherry blossoms?) The panels continually moved, slid, trundled and rotated in a ghastly nightmarish Rubic–cuboid fantasy till one felt like echoing Shadbolt and crying "Ods bobs. Art thou mad? Am I mad? Are we all mad?". To cap all was the portrayal of the Mikado (John Rath) as a 9–foot high robot in a mask that looked as if it had wandered in from STAR WARS, and was totally divorced from the action. He toddled about on stilts, and spoke and sang in an ethereal voice which had no contact with reality. His dialogue was flat and unreal. Far from engendering fear or humour, the only reaction this performance aroused in me was one of irritation. It was a positive insult to a fine actor to make him play the part in such a way. (This was modified in the TV production. Deryck Hamon, who had taken over the part, played it more realistically, and sang excellently).
The portrayal of the title role, however, epitomized that of all the characters. They were played as flat cardboard creations – cartoons from a comic strip, totally devoid of any sort of humanity or reality. Fenton Gray's Ko–Ko was a typical "busy" but largely unfunny comedian (the only funny thing about him was the peculiar shapes his mouth twisted into when he spoke), Gary Montaine (Pooh–Bah) a grotesque and hammy poseur, who appeared first in a gold dressing gown reclining languidly on a scarlet couch, with a cigar in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. Dreadful meaningless rubbish. The "interrupted" cadenza went something like: "Here you might listen to this bit" (after the first phrase); then "Thank you, I haven't nearly finished yet". This came over as contrived and hammy; it may have been old D'Oyly Carte tradition once, but it dropped out long before my time, though it hung on in some amateur productions. But there has never been a better way of doing it than Leo Sheffield's on the 1927 recording. Pish–Tush (Terence Sharpe) was a nothing portrayal, dressed in blue and white, with a blue brolly.
The diction of most of the singers was very poor. One lost many of the consonants at the ends of words. Obviously D'Oyly Carte singers are no longer trained to sing as in the days of the old company, of which diction was one of its strongest points – a point on which no other opera company of recent years has come within measureable distance of it. Purely as an aside I will observe that there was a man in the chorus who looked remarkably like Rutland Barrington.
It was about the most insipid, unfunny, charmless MIKADO I have ever seen. Why can the present company not do anything right? Almost the only scene with any sort of interest was the Ko–Ko/Katisha scene in Act 2, where Jill Pert, in spite of all the obstacles put in her way by the production, succeeding in arousing some sympathy by her singing of "Hearts do not break", and changing for the duet out of her Lady–Jane–ish black and purple gown into a really glamorous scarlet and white creation, seeming to say "There's life in the old girl yet". The second verse of "Hearts do not break" was restored. It does not work, since the slightly arch words do not fit the serious mood of Sullivan's music. It was interesting to hear, but it only proved that Gilbert and Sullivan had been right to cut it. Some other additions from the first night text were made, including the full version of "Were you not to Ko–Ko plighted".
Some things about the busy, fussy production were incomprehensible. Who were all the people who appeared on the balconies during Nanki–Poo and Yum–Yum's love scene, doing strange distracting things, and scattering petals? No doubt the producer could have explained, but no audience should be required to ask. A production should be an interpretation of the author's and composer's intentions, not an ego–trip for the producer. If a producer feels compelled to make his mark on the world, he should write his own show – if he can. Kit Hesketh–Harvey hit the nail on the head when he wrote "You too, can write a great West End show – steal it from somebody else".
MICHAEL WALTERS
Web page created 9 September 1998