AUDIENCE GUIDE 2017 - 2018 | Our 58th Season 1 2018 | Issue For our production of Hot Mikado, the Hot Mikado takes place in the Cabot Theatre is transformed into a Japanese town of Titipu, where a 1940s Harlem nightclub. Back then, young woman, (Yum-Yum), a you could expect to see top stars of wandering trumpeter, (Nanki-Poo) and the day, like Duke Ellington, Cab the Lord High Executioner, (Ko-Ko) Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers find themselves in a preposterous love with their dazzling tap routines. triangle. To add to the nonsense, Featured in our fictional nightclub is Katisha, the older fianceé of Hot Mikado, a cultural collision Nanki-Poo, is determined to between East and West with hip ‘40s re-capture him with the help of the IN THIS ISSUE American fashion blended with the Mikado. What ensues is a tangled web style and culture of old Japan. of typical Gilbert and Sullivan topsy-turvy confusion that will keep Hot Mikado History Hot Mikado is David H. Bell’s 1986 you wondering what’s next. adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Harlem classic operetta, which retains the Sullivan's great music is jazzed up in original's daffy plot and incisive 1940s style by arranger Rob Bowman. Synopsis political satire. “I think Skylight On stage, our Titipu Town Band keeps audiences will be thrilled by this the joint jumping with a sizzling score Gilbert and Sullivan updated version of Gilbert and that features jazz, swing, gospel, Glossary Sullivan’s comic masterpiece. It Be-Bop and blues. The action is remains true to their wonderful music nonstop with an energetic cast that and harmonies, but takes a fresh doesn't miss a beat in knockout approach to address some of the jitterbug, swing and foot stomping outdated dialog and stereotyping,” gospel dance routines that raise the said director Austene Van. roof. The Skylight’s Hot Mikado is fast, furious fun. And it’s smokin’ hot! This guide is available online at skylightmusictheatre.org When The Mikado Got Hot Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado started to heat up in 1938 when The Swing Mikado opened in Chicago. Part of the Federal Theatre Project, a Season Sponsors New Deal program to fund artistic programs during the Great Depression, it was one of numerous relief measures to employ artists, writers and theatre workers. The Swing Mikado was a swing re-orchestration of Arthur Sullivan's music thst became a huge hit. After a short, but successful run, the production moved to New York and Broadway. Flamboyant producer Mike Todd saw this success and responded with his own adaptation, Hot Mikado, which opened in 1939. It had the star power of an African-American cast that included Cab Calloway and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, already famous on Broadway and beloved for his dance routines with Shirley Temple in the 1935 movie The Little Colonel. Still not ready to call it quits, The Swing Mikado moved to a theater right across the street. Todd fought back by hanging a banner blocking his rival's Research/Writing by marquee. He then pulled another ace Justine Leonard for ENLIGHTEN, from his sleeve and sold the show to Skylight Music Theatre’s Education Program the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. It played through the summer – four Edited by Ray Jivoff times a day, seven days a week, at a [email protected] price of 40¢ to 90¢. The Swing Mikado Margaret Bridges just couldn’t compete. Hot Mikado [email protected] lasted for two seasons and was reportedly one of the most popular attractions at the fair. Then it quietly faded from public popularity. In the 1980s, when writer David H. Bell and musician Rob Bowman were interested in doing a revival, they couldn’t find much of the script or the arrangements and decided to create a new adaptation. Their Hot Mikado first appeared at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. in 1986 where it received rave reviews. It has been produced around the world. We are pleased to open our season with Hot Mikado. 158 N. Broadway IMBd biography by L. Bligh; Weiss, Milwaukee, WI 53202 Hedy. "David Bell revisits Hot Mikado for (414) 291-7811 Drury Lane". Chicago Sun-Times, 2010 www.skylightmusictheatre.org AUDIENCE GUIDE | HOT MIKADO Harlem History the center of a “spiritual coming of age” Ironically, some of the clubs had a Jim in which Locke’s “New Negro” Crow policy that allowed black transformed “social disillusionment to performers but excluded blacks as race pride.” The intent of the customers. movement was not political but aesthetic, as noted by author Langston The Cotton Club was Harlem's most Hughes who called it the “expression glamorous and star-studded club with of our individual dark-skinned selves.” performers like Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters, Ella Fitzgerald A new way of playing the piano called and other big names. the Harlem Stride style was created during the Harlem Renaissance, and There is no consensus as to the helped blur the lines between the poor precise end of the Harlem and the socially elite African Renaissance. The 1929 American Americans. A traditional jazz band was stock market crash and the onset of composed primarily of brass the Great Depression, coupled with the instruments and was considered a end of Prohibition in 1933, loosely symbol of the south, but the piano was marked the transition to post- Harlem began as a sleepy village seen as an instrument of the wealthy. Renaissance Harlem. founded by Dutch settlers in 1658 as By adding the piano, jazz music’s Nieuw Haarlem, located directly north popularity spread throughout the Harlem’s decline in the 50s and 60s of what is now Central Park in country to an all-time high. gave the neighborhood a negative Manhattan. In 1664, the English took reputation. But Harlem began to see control and anglicized the name to Harlem’s booming nightclub scene rapid gentrification in the late 1990s. Harlem. The Dutch, French and began to draw the attention of wealthy The number of housing units increased English settlers oversaw Harlem’s whites, eager to experience Harlem's 14% between 1990 and 2000 and transition from an isolated rural village excitement. Variety wrote, "Harlem's property values in Central Harlem to an upper-middle class suburb. night life now surpasses that of increased nearly 300%. Harlem is In spite of its current reputation as the Broadway itself. From midnight until once again the place to be. cultural capital of black America, after dawn it is a seething cauldron of Nubian mirth and hilarity." For white Harlem had few black residents until a wave of white flight produced its downtowners, Harlem’s nightclubs offered a glimpse and a thrill beyond Reference: The Reader’s Companion to remarkable transition at the beginning American History. Eric Foner and John A. the color line, skirting the ban of of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Harlem, became the center of a prohibition by offering liquor to white Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. movement called the Harlem “slummers” and curiosity seekers. Renaissance. It was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that kindled a new black cultural identity. Some say the Harlem Renaissance started in 1917, with the premiere of Three Plays for a Negro Theatre. Written by white playwright Ridgely Torrence, the plays rejected the stereotypes of the blackface and minstrel show traditions and featured African-American actors conveying complex human emotions. Civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson in 1917 called these plays "the most important single event in the history of the Negro in the American Theater." The essence of the movement was summed up by critic and teacher Alain Locke in 1926: “Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self-determination.” Harlem became 2017-2018 | SKYLIGHT MUSIC THEATRE SYNOPSIS: ACT 1 Act I Gentlemen of the fictitious Japanese Ko-Ko enters (Behold the Lord High Ko-Ko argues that it would be town of Titipu introduce themselves (If Executioner) and shares his list of "extremely difficult, not to say you want to know who we are). A poor people "who would not be missed" if dangerous, for someone to attempt minstrel, Nanki-Poo, arrives and they were executed (I’ve got a little their own beheading, and it would be introduces himself (A wand'ring list). Ko-Ko then discusses the plans suicide, which is a capital offence.” minstrel I). He asks about his beloved, for his wedding to Yum-Yum with Luckily, Ko-Ko discovers that Nanki- Yum-Yum, who is a ward of Ko-Ko, Pooh Bah. Poo, in despair over losing Yum-Yum, formerly a cheap tailor. One of the is preparing to commit suicide. Ko-Ko gentlemen, Pish-Tush, explains that Yum-Yum appears with Ko-Ko's other makes a bargain with him: Nanki-Poo when the Mikado decreed that flirting two wards, Peep-Bo and Pitti-Sing may marry Yum-Yum for one month if, was a crime punishable by death, the (Three little maids from school). at the end of that time, he allows Titipu authorities avoided the decree Nanki-Poo tells Ko-Ko he loves himself to be executed. Ko-Ko would by appointing Ko-Ko, a prisoner Yum-Yum. When Nanki-Poo is alone then marry the young widow. condemned to death for flirting, to the with Yum-Yum he tells her his secret: post of Lord High Executioner. he is the son of the Mikado travelling Everyone arrives to celebrate Nanki- in disguise to avoid the advances of Poo and Yum-Yum's union (Let the Katisha, an elderly lady of his father's throng our joy advance), but the As Ko-Ko was the next prisoner court.