No 43 -- 1995 Edited by Michael Walters
In Gasbag of April 1983, Marc Shepherd made an assessment of this opera, in which he makes one or two controversial statements that should not go unanswered. In the same issue he reviews the production that took place in Stratford, Ontario, in the summers of 1982 and 1983, in which some similar comments occurred. Marc seems to have seen a number of badly performed Mikados, which have adversely coloured his reaction to the opera. But when he says: Gilbert's libretto, which has been so highly praised by so many people, does not carry itself. Without interesting business to go along with it, The Mikado can put people to sleep.
It would be impossible for me to disagree more completely with this view. One of the remarkable things about The Mikado is that it requires absolutely nothing more to play itself than the absolutely faithful rendering of Gilbert's text. By far the most successful Mikado I ever saw was one at Exeter University in the early 1970s, on which I have commented before in these pages. It was played on a completely bare stage with black curtains, the only furniture being a huge gong centre back in Act 1, replaced by a throne in Act 2. The costumes were serviceable but unremarkable. There was no "business" of any kind, but because it was blessed with a cast of excellent actors, and a producer who really understood the text, it was quite the funniest Mikado I have seen. But, and this is the point I think, the acting does need to be good. A Mikado without good acting, and without business, would indeed be insufferable, but the fault is not Gilbert's. Gilbert's rexts are as difficult to play really well as Shakespeare; and it has been pointed out (by Gervase Hughes, I think, though I stand to being corrected on this) that Sullivan's music is as difficult to sing really well as Mozart. Would that present day directors could be persuaded of this, and cease to treat the operas as though they were musicals. They are not musicals, but sophisticated stage dramas which deserve to be treated with respect.
Marc makes one or two specific comments that I find slightly puzzling. For instance , in reviewing the Stratford [production, he says:
There was one dialogue change which I found particularly funny and appropriate. For Ko-Ko's line "It might have been on his pocket handkerchief, but Japanese don't use pocket handkerchiefs", Stratford substituted the infinitely better: "We would have checked his American Express card, but he must have left home without it".
Perhaps this is reflection of our diverging cultures, but whereas I find the original line mildly but not killingly amusing, I can find nothing remotely humorous in the substitute. In fact I don't even understand it, although in other contexts references to American Express cards are often good for a laugh.
Marc also comments that he is worried by the fact that there are a number of lines in The Mikado which have to be said in exactly the right way to be funny. Well, yes, of course. This is one of the most fundamental things in the art of playing and writing comedy. Anyone who cannot deliver such a line correctly, is simply not an actor. A comedy in which all the jokes are so obvious that they can be delivered by any fool and still be funny is a play of no literary value, and has the characteristics of a sit-com. Indeed, if you search the files of mid-nineteenth-century burlesque and pantomime, you can find many stage entertainments with just the characters of whose lack Marc complain in The Mikado. But The Mikado lives, they do not.
MICHAEL WALTERS
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