Lamplighters Revives Reconceptualization

Yesterday afternoon at the Blue Shield of California Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Lamplighters Music Theatre presented the first of three performances of one of its most unique approaches to the canon of operettas bringing the words of W. S. Gilbert together with the music of Arthur Sullivan. (The last of those performances will take place this afternoon.) IL DUCATO: The New Mikado transplanted The Mikado; or The Town of Titipu from Japan to Milan to avoid any “politically incorrect” slurs on Japanese culture (past or present). As I write this, IL DUCATO had its first performance almost exactly seven years ago, on the evening of August 19, 2016.

Over the course of my personal history of following Lamplighters’ productions, I have been consistently impressed by the ability to situate engaging musical performance of highly imaginative scenarios in a context of no-holds-barred farce. One might say that the ensemble has found the sweet spot between the elegance of both music and script and the down-and-dirty low comedy of the staging. If this were a game of poker, then every time Gilbert put his “comedy chips” on the table, Lamplighters always knew how to see and raise.

As a result, this revival production had several twists of its own to add to the “topsy-turvy” of the previous performance. As those familiar with the narrative know, the leading male role (Niccolù in the DUCATO version) is the son of the Ducato of Milan; and he is fated to marry the elderly Catiscià. To avoid the marriage, he runs away from home to join a village band as the second trombone player. This is the very first time I have seen a staging of any version of The Mikado in which this character first appears on the stage carrying a trombone! (There is also an exchange with the orchestra pit over the need for only one trombone.)

Regardless of any “historical recasting,” many (most?) of the scenes are stolen by the Lord High Executioner, performed in this production by F. Lawrence Ewing. While the script is basically comedy, this is a role that has to provide convincing accounts of a broad range of dispositions; and Ewing knew exactly how to nail every one of them, culminating in his scenes with Catiscià (Sara Couden), in which (in both roles) revulsion gradually morphs into sincere affection. Similarly, Chung-Wai Soong knew exactly how to balance the menacing authority of the title character with a seriously perverse sense of humor.

There is an old joke about Frederic Ashton’s choreography for his Cinderella ballet. I believe it was a critic for The New Yorker that described the production as a story about two droll old maids that happen to have a beautiful stepsister that goes to a ball and marries a prince. Similarly, in IL DUCATO there is the risk that the romance of Niccolù (double-cast) and Amiam (Jennifer Mitchell) comes across as secondary to both the title character and the Lord High Executioner. Fortunately, those lovers get to deliver some of Sullivan’s most engaging and heart-felt music from his repertoire. Thus, while the comedy may rule over the narrative, one still arrives at a sincere happy ending.

IL DUCATO may be a radical reconception of a Gilbert and Sullivan classic; but it still rises to the theatrical heights of the “original version.”