Stompin’ on the Savoy?

In Madison, Wisconsin in 2015, Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado was staged with the look of Japanese anime. The same year, in a Gananoque, Ontario staging of The Pirates of Penzance set in the 1920s, the song “Poor Wand’ring One” segued into “Makin’ Whoopee.” Such nontraditional incarnations of G & S works are hardly isolated incidents. Just as theatre companies have looked for novel concepts for Shakespearean productions, so they’ve sought new approaches for the Savoy operas. Yeomen of the Guard director Sean Graney’s innovative takes for The Hypocrites company in Chicago are among the most striking recent examples, but such experimentation has been going on for a long time. But not always—not in Great Britain, anyway. From 1875 until 1961, the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company maintained a strict monopoly on professional U.K. productions of the operas. Amateurs were obligated to receive permission from D’Oyly Carte for their versions—agreeing to pay the company a royalty and to follow sanctioned scripts and scores to the letter. Things were different in America, where, according to writer Ian Bradley, a cross- dressing rendition of H.M.S. Pinafore appeared as early as 1888. In 1939, two updates of The Mikado, both with African-American casts, were staged in New York City: The Hot Mikado and The Swing Mikado. In the same year, the Labor Stage mounted The Red Mikado. Later years saw The Cool Mikado (a film), The Mod Mikado (set in a topless bar) and The Incommunicado Mikado (a spoof on the Watergate scandal). A particularly influential production was the Joseph Papp Pirates that played in Central Park in 1980. Giving the opera a musical-comedy sheen, it moved to Broadway for a long run. Jonathan Miller’s celebrated version of The Mikado for the English National Opera in 1986 was set not in Japan but in an upscale British seaside resort in the 1920s. Both of these productions were filmed and seen widely on home video. Lesser-known G & S works have largely escaped experimentation, although the British touring company Opera della Luna has produced a blend of Ruddigore and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Perhaps the most remarkable production of Yeomen so far has been the site- specific 2009 rendition, performed with the real-life Tower of London in the background.

—Mark Dundas Wood

An edited version reprinted from OSF’s 2016 Illuminations, a 64-page guide to the season’s plays. For more information on the play, click here. To buy the full Illuminations, click here. Members at the Donor level and above and teachers who bring school groups to OSF receive a free copy of Illuminations.