Playwright: Gilbert & Sullivan
At: Noble Fool Theatre, Pheasant Run Resort
Phone: ( 630 ) 584-6342; $27-$37
Runs through: Sept. 4
Noble Fool remakes Gilbert & Sullivan's biggest hit with a brilliant concept and lively, but hit-or-miss, execution. Unlike many G&S updates, Gilbert's dialogue and lyrics are not altered, not even Koko's patter song, 'I've Got a Little List,' so often rewritten with contemporary references. Yet The Mikado 2.005 is indubitably modern.
Director Amy Binns-Calvey and designer Brian Sidney Bembridge cleverly transport Act I from the Titipu town square to Titipu station, an ultra-hip, gleaming Tokyo subway stop, complete with a tony sake bar put to good use by the gentlemen of Japan--the male chorus--in nearly-identical black business suits, cell phones and laptops in hand. Ditto, the chorus of schoolgirls, each one a soft-core anime fantasy in sailor suit school uniform with short skirt.
An additional visual element, Mike Tutaj's video design, humorously projects turn-off-your-cellphone announcements in English and Japanese, Gilbert's words as karaoke lyrics and visual sequences that emphasize modern Tokyo's rat-race life. The video also briefly chronicles yellowface acting, scrupulously avoided in this production. Yes, every actor is in a black wig, but otherwise actors make no effort to look or act Asian.
The purpose of all this is to relate Gilbert's social and political satire not merely to modern Japan but to modern urban life anywhere, and it works. All is quite correct.
The musical treatment is less successful. Without altering vocal lines, musical director Bonnie Shadrake has created all-new instrumentals for a four-piece electronic band, and given many songs a pop beat. Some songs work, 'Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day' as a pop ballad, for example; but others get lost striving too hard for originality, among them such Mikado hits as 'Here's A How-De-Do' and 'The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring.' The slow, dragging tempo on the chorus of 'There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast' is just wrong.
The Mikado 2.005 is blessed with generally strong leads, among them Robert A. Felbinger, a Nanki-Poo who can sing the part and looks the part, bringing boyish sexiness to his punk-rock prince. Ditto Courtney Rioux's coy, knowing Yum-Yum. Comic leads are deftly covered by Brendan Kelly as Ko-Ko and Mick Houlahan's refreshingly understated emperor. Marilynn Bogetich's severe Katisha is vocally fine, and offers a leather surprise. Patrick Mellen sings Pooh-Bah with authority but acts him with less authority.
This is not to single out Mellen's acting, for the biggest inconsistency of this production across the board is delivery of the dialogue. It's tricky 19th Century stage comedy with Gilbert's particularly presentational, sometimes stilted elocution. Often this cast doesn't take proper time to set up a joke or point a line. Nonetheless, The Mikado 2.005 is joyful and high-spirited with a concept unlike any Mikado you've seen before.