THE MIKADO In 1986, English National Opera staged a Mikado produced and directed by Jonathan Miller. In 1987, at The London Coliseum, Thames Television filmed a performance (producer/director John Michael Phillips) for subsequent ITV transmission. Released on DVD by A&E Home Video in 2005 in Region 1 format only, it is this 1987 filmed performance that is here under review. The scene is “Titipu, a seaside resort off the coast of Japan ...” COMMENT Premiered in 1986 and revived regularly since, this Jonathan Miller / English National Opera Mikado seems to provoke notably sharp divisions of opinion. For example, for every Ron Orenstein (Scaphio in SavoyNet’s 2003 Utopia Ltd), who thought Idle was a terrific Ko-Ko and particularly liked the very arch Yum-Yum1 and Chris Webster (another SavoyNet stalwart), who found the production to be a revelation, and ... loved every minute 2 of it there’s a counterview such as this from NYC theatre and opera director Nate Merchant: Jonathan Miller ... obviously hates The Mikado ... loathes it. (He) couldn't have made the company work harder in distracting the audience from the story. Almost every song was ripped out of context for gags that had nothing to do with the plot and the totally extraneous dancers were criminal ... ... Peter G. Davis describes this production ... as Gilbert and Sullivan for those who hate Gilbert and Sullivan – which includes most card-carrying British intellectuals, Miller clearly among them. And I think that's the problem. If you hate it, are bored by it, are tired of it, for God's sake don't direct it! I would rather have watched any incompetent and overwhelmed community theater mangle the text and lyrics more than I would an eminent, intelligent, world-renowned doctor- director kill this best of comedic operettas.3 (1) Idle (Ko-Ko) with Richard Van Allan (Pooh-Bah) (2) Bonaventura Bottone (Nanki-Poo) And whether you agree or not with his overall assessment, Mr Merchant seems to have been spot on about Miller, who, in the second episode of Simon Butteris’s 2010 Sky Arts TV series A Motley Pair, witheringly dismisses G&S as 4 “UKIP set to music”. “I’ve never really had anything but contempt for Gilbert and Sullivan,” he sneers. “It’s the most boringly self-satisfied form of English drivel.” Though I can’t agree, I can understand why those of arid and humour- less mien in particular might think so – and, after all, that one man’s whimsy should be another’s drivel is surely inevitable. But Miller isn’t humourless – he can’t be, for in the rehearsal footage included on this DVD, we see him literally rolling on the floor laughing after Idle spontaneously kisses Richard Angas’s shoe. (Convinced? No, me neither.) Yet the obvious question remains – why on earth would anyone so venomously contemptuous of G&S choose to mount a production – any production – of The Mikado? The DVD bonus feature shows Miller on day one of rehearsals outlining to his assembled troupe his vision: “We’ve gone flat out for playing it as an English panto musical,” he tells them, “partly based on Jack Buchanan [a British film actor known from mid-30s to mid-50s as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town], partly based on [The Marx Brothers’] Duck Soup.” 25 years later, Miller expanded on his theme: The Mikado is famous for being Japanese and for years it’s been played as a straightforward Japanese operetta. There’s absolutely no reason for it to be Japanese. As soon as you hear the actual dialogue and the songs, it’s quite clearly the English arsing around and simply being silly. So we’ve gone flat out for playing it as an English panto musical, based on all the musical movies you’ve seen made between 1925 and 1938. But I don’t want to send up the opera, I want to use the opera to send up the English in a way impossible in a Japanese setting.5 That his heavily “Anglicised” production should come to divide opinion, then, is hardly surprising. (1) Jack Buchanan (1891-1957) (2) Duck Soup (1933) And when it comes to John Michael Phillips’ film of the live production rather than the production itself, matters don’t get any less fraught, views less polarised or positions less entrenched. Depending which Amazon.co.uk reviewer you believe, the film is either “wonderful entertainment” or “the worst thing you’ll see on DVD”. Of 50 reviewers on Amazon.com, 26 give the full five stars but eight others only one. Similarly at IMDb6, while some reviews talk glowingly of “a triumph for Jonathan Miller” and a performance “first-rate and supremely funny”, others note “terrible camera directing, silly and contrived angles, poor transitions from close-ups to wide shots, gimmicky and super- fluous ‘multi-faceting lens’ effects” and “hammy” Eric Idle. Here from DVD Talk is part of a review by John Sinnott: The Mikado ... is a very funny and entertaining play, but this production leaves a lot of be desired. First off, they changed all of the costumes. Instead of being in traditional Japanese dress, the cast is outfitted in 1930's style western suits. In Japanese garb, the absurd names and plot seem easy to swallow, but in western dress the play just doesn't work. The setting also appears to be the lobby of a hotel, at least the chorus is dressed as bellboys. This is another disconcerting choice which will only serve to confuse people who aren't familiar with the opera. The set and all of the props are painted white, too, for reasons I haven't been able to comprehend. As far as the acting goes, it was good, but not great. Eric Idle hams it up quite well, and adds a lot of humour to the production, but he seems a little too over the top in some parts. The same goes for the rest of the cast. They really try to sell each and every joke, throwing subtlety to the wind. While this works for the most part, I couldn't help think that the opera would have been much more humorous if they toned it down a notch or two. (1) Idle with Felicity Palmer (Katisha) (2) Lesley Garrett, Ethna Robinson and Susan Bullock as Yum-Yum, Pitti-Sing and Peep-Bo Which brings up another problem. This isn't a movie of the opera, it's the recording of a performance. As such, the actors seem to be playing to the cheap seats, which doesn't work if there's a camera recording every little gesture. They didn't tone down the makeup for this filming either, and everyone looks like a badly made up clown. From twenty rows back I'm sure they look fine, but on screen you can see the lines on the side of the actors’ faces where the makeup stops and the excessive lipstick, eye shadow and rouge look horrible. While a play can be successfully filmed (Sweeney Todd, for example), this one wasn't. The camera work is fairly poor, with jerky movements in parts and people not being centred like they should be. Additionally, the director felt that people wouldn't be entertained by just watching the play (which begs the question why did he choose to film it?) and so he added some wacky lens effects. Seeing multiple copies of the same image and rotating kaleidoscope effects doesn't add to the play, though, it just 7 distracts from it ... Bang on, every word. I enjoyed watching this DVD (once, though probably won’t again any time soon) but this was thanks entirely to the work of Messrs Gilbert and Sullivan in the capable hands of solid professional players and despite the unwonted and ill-disposed depredations of Dr Miller. Two of several “wacky lens effects” ... RUNNING TIME The Mikado: 130 minutes / A Source Of Innocent Merriment (bonus rehearsal-footage film): 38:30 SUBTITLES Regrettably, none RATING Okay, but there are better Mikadoes around than this (including all five others reviewed on this site). 14. * * * * * Notes / Sources 1 The G&S Discography at [email protected] 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 The UK Independence Party, a right wing, Euro-averse political rump operating on the fringes of mainstream British politics. 5 Sky Arts HD webpage 6 The Internet Movie Database 7 John Sinnott, DVD Talk, 29 December 2005 - Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado w/ Eric Idle with thanks to all .