The Mikado is an enduringly popular comic opera with memorable music, endearing characters and some of the wittiest lyrical comedy in the English language. Featuring much loved songs such as “I’ve Got A Little List” (the better known title of “As Someday it May Happen”), “A Wand’ring Minstrel I”, “Three Little Maids From School Are We”, “The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring” and many more.
Nanki-Poo loves Yum-Yum but she’s betrothed to Ko-Ko, the new Lord High Executioner. When the Mikado (or emperor) orders a beheading, Nanki-Poo and Ko-Ko try to come to an arrangement that doesn’t involve anyone losing their head! However, the arrival in town of the spurned Katisha turns everything topsy-turvy. With melodious mischief and preposterous plots, the tangled web unravels; will the punishment fit the crime?
Gilbert’s imagined Japan was enriched by a London exhibition featuring a Japanese village inhabited by 100 citizens and the European obsession with everything Japanese following its re-opening to the world. The distracting beauty of his Japanese setting allowed Gilbert to get away with poking fun at the staid social norms, absurd etiquette, and weighty bureaucracy of a colonising Victorian England.
This delightful comic opera enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe where 17 companies performed it 9,000 times within two years of its premiere in 1885. And, in 2006, the Japanese Tokyo Theatre Company presented The Mikado as part of the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in England.
Music: Sir Arthur Sullivan
Libretto: W.S. Gilbert
Director: Andrew McGrail
MD: John Ferguson
Cast
Yum-Yum – Cindy Liu
Pitti-Sing – Katherine Stewart
Peep-Bo – Hayley Jobson
Katisha – Lynlee Williams
Nanki-Poo – Lachlan McIntyre
Ko-Ko – John Parncutt
Pooh-Bah – Peter Hanway
The Mikado – Phil Elphinstone
Pish-Tush – Nick Sharman
Chorus
Grace Liu, Katerina Collier, Catherine Bates, Susan Hurley, Shirin Albert, Hannah Thorne, Fiona McFarlane, Robbie Hannan, Sarah Berry, Honi Walker, Stephanna Betts, Danielle Zuccala, Emma Kathryn, Paul Tooby, Jamie Tampion, Stephen Headey, Philip Liberatore, Paul Cruickshank, Ken Knight, David Bradaska, Andrew Bell, Robin Halls.
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