The Mikado

Despite wealth, fame, and a success that now is taken for granted Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players are still able to surprise their audience.

Last night at Agassiz the cast of the Mikado exploded, soared, and then, just at the end, drooped, but the chances Peter Skolnik took with G&S's masterpiece worked and carried everything off at the end.

The Mikado has been done so many times, and directors usually rely on a number of classic moves. Pittising and here two school mates have made a thousand returns from school to meet her betrothed, the Lord High Executioner, and each time they have dipped their knees and twirled their fans at the exact same point in the score. But Skolnik has changed all that. His blocking and his gags are brand new,--only an audience that has never seen a G&S should fail to enjoy this.

Almost nowhere did Skolnik play it safe. The dialogue is riddled with puns the author would have choked on. Lover's sighs become hyennaic giggles and Ko-ko, the Lord High Executioner, climbed half-way up the balcony before he told the irascible Katisha to "shrink not from me."

Not that that's much trouble for Steve Kaplan's Ko-ko. Kaplan, who assumed a full lotus position at one point, wound himself around the stage. This bumbling hero writhed, dived, lurched, smirked, and stayed alive even to the bitter end. When he was on the stage with Michael Sargent, the pace quickened and the laughter was ready for them before they opened their mouths. Sargent was Poo-bah, the Lord High Everything Else, a tall, grumbling hypocrit he portrayed almost perfectly. When he smiled a rare smile, he wrinkled every patch of skin he had.

The rest of the cast, at least through the first act, supported these two quite well. Michael Campbell as Nanki-poo and Deborah Strong as Yum-yum made clear voiced, well coordinated lovers, and Nancy Sproul's contralto Katisha was vibrant, if somewhat unintelligible when she didn't face the audience. Although the women's chorus was weak, they were offset by an orchestra that finished splendidly. The pace was much too slow in the second act--perhaps because everyone was a little tired from the fun that preceded it.