The Black Mikado | |
---|---|
Music | Arthur Sullivan |
Lyrics | W. S. Gilbert |
Book | Janos Bajtala, George Larnyoh and Eddie Quansah |
Basis | Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado |
Productions | 1975 London |
The Black Mikado is a musical comedy, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado , adapted by Janos Bajtala, George Larnyoh and Eddie Quansah from W. S. Gilbert's original 1885 libretto and Arthur Sullivan's score. The show premiered on 24 April 1975 at the Cambridge Theatre in London, where it ran for 472 performances before going on a national tour. A 1976 production was mounted in Soweto, South Africa, where it played at the Diepkloof Hall. [1] After this, the musical was not revived.
The plot of The Black Mikado does not stray far from the Gilbert and Sullivan original, except that in the musical the action is set on a Caribbean island rather than in Japan. Sullivan's original score is rearranged into a mixture of rock, reggae, blues and calypso. The West End production was directed by Braham Murray with a nearly all black cast, the exception being veteran actor Michael Denison's Pooh-Bah, [2] who was white and dressed in a white tropical suit and pith helmet. Theatre writer John Bush Jones says that the white Pooh-Bah was portrayed "as a lone scheming westerner, 'condescending' to serve an emerging black nationalist country for his own grafting purposes." [3] The rest of the cast were dressed in what were basically African and Caribbean costumes, "some of which were made to look pseudo-Japanese", and the sets were Japanese. [4] Pooh-Bah is an uptight English colonial official who is contrasted with the sexy, exuberant Caribbean islanders. The Three Little Maids from School arrive dressed in uniforms from their proper English school, including evening gloves and straw boaters. As they sing of their freedom from the ladies seminary, they strip off their modest clothing until they are shown in their native dress. [5]
The cast included Patti Boulaye (under the name Patricia Ebigwei) as Yum-Yum, Floella Benjamin as Pitti-Sing, Michael Denison as Pooh-Bah, Norman Beaton as Nanki-Poo, Derek Griffiths as Ko-Ko, Jenny McGusty as Peep-Bo, Vernon Nesbeth as Pish-Tush, Val Pringle as The Mikado and Anita Tucker as Katisha. Terry Lane wrote, "Norman Beaton was a very handsome young Nanki-Poo and Patricia Ebigwei was a heart-stoppingly beautiful Yum-Yum. The sexual tensions that are implicit in the plot were exploited to the full.... Patricia Ebigwei's version of 'The Sun Whose Rays' [is] the performance against which all others must now be judged ... a slow, erotic, languid ballad of vanity and sexual self-satisfaction that makes the conventional renditions seem prissy". [5]
The numbers listed in the 1975 recording were as follows. The show had additional musical numbers. [6]
Earlier adaptations of The Mikado employing Black casts include:
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. It opened on 14 March 1885, in London, where it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 672 performances, the second-longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time. By the end of 1885, it was estimated that, in Europe and America, at least 150 companies were producing the opera.
Topsy-Turvy is a 1999 British musical period drama film written and directed by Mike Leigh, starring Jim Broadbent as W. S. Gilbert and Allan Corduner as Sir Arthur Sullivan, along with Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville and Ron Cook. The story concerns the 15-month period in 1884 and 1885 leading up to the premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. The film focuses on the creative conflict between playwright and composer, and their decision to continue their partnership, which led to their creation of several more Savoy operas.
The Swing Mikado is a musical theatre adaptation, in two acts, of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera, The Mikado, with music arranged by Gentry Warden. It featured a setting transposed from Japan to a tropical island. The show was first staged by an all-black company in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938. Later that year, it transferred to Broadway. Other changes from the original work included the re-scoring of five of the musical numbers in "swing" style, the insertion of popular dance sequences including The Truck and the Cakewalk, and the rewriting of some of the dialogue in an attempt at black dialect. Other than that, the original dialogue and score of 1885 were used.
The Hot Mikado was a musical theatre adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera The Mikado with an African-American cast. It was first produced by Mike Todd on Broadway in 1939. It starred Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the title role, with musical arrangements by Charles L. Cooke and direction by Hassard Short.
Hot Mikado is a musical comedy, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera The Mikado, adapted by David H. Bell and Rob Bowman. After researching the 1939 Broadway musical, The Hot Mikado, and being disappointed at the amount of surviving material that they could find, Bell and Bowman created a new adaptation, Hot Mikado. "Not much remains, however, of the 1939 show’s African-American emphasis, save the cool hipster style which even then was beginning to be eagerly pre-empted by Americans of every ethnicity."
Thomas Round was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in the leading tenor roles of the Savoy Operas and grand opera.
Philip White Potter was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the principal tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1961 to 1971. Potter recorded several of his roles with D'Oyly Carte, and his performance as Nanki-Poo is preserved in the company's 1966 film of The Mikado.
Geraldine Ulmar was an American singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
George Tyrell Thorne was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in the comic baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, especially on tour and in the original New York City productions. He married D'Oyly Carte chorister Geraldine Thompson.
Fred Billington was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. His career with the company began in 1879 and continued with brief interruptions until his death in 1917.
The Cool Mikado is a British musical film released in 1963, directed by Michael Winner starring Frankie Howerd, Lionel Blair and Stubby Kaye. It was produced by Harold Baim, with music arranged by Martin Slavin and John Barry. The script was written by Michael Winner from an adaptation by Maurice Browning.
For nearly 150 years, Gilbert and Sullivan have pervasively influenced popular culture in the English-speaking world. Lines and quotations from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have become part of the English language, such as "short, sharp shock", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", "let the punishment fit the crime", and "A policeman's lot is not a happy one".
Charles Eric Goulding was a British operatic tenor and actor best known for his performances with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory.
Ellen Sophia Taylor, known professionally as Sybil Grey, was a British singer and actress during the Victorian era best known for creating a series of minor roles in productions by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, including roles in several of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operas, from 1880 to 1888. Afterwards, she went on to a long West End theatre career, appearing in both musical theatre and plays.
Thomas Fisher Morgan was a Welsh singer and actor best remembered as a principal bass-baritone with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company during the 1950s.
Dick Deadeye, or Duty Done is a 1975 British animated musical comedy film directed by Bill Melendez and designed by Ronald Searle, based on the 19th century comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The Mikado is a 1939 British musical comedy film based on Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera The Mikado. Shot in Technicolor, the film stars Martyn Green as Ko-Ko, Sydney Granville as Pooh-Bah, the American singer Kenny Baker as Nanki-Poo and Jean Colin as Yum-Yum. Many of the other leads and choristers were or had been members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
The Mikado is a 1967 British musical film adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera of the same name. The film was directed by Stuart Burge and was a slightly edited adaptation of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company's production of The Mikado and used all D'Oyly Carte singers.
"Three Little Maids from School Are We", sometimes listed as "Three Little Maids", is a song from Act I of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado. The song is a trio for three female characters who are schoolmates; at the end of the song, the three are joined by the chorus of female schoolmates. The three friends sing that they are "filled to the brim with girlish glee", find "fun" in life and "come from a ladies' seminary".
The Black Mikado is a musical comedy, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, adapted by Janos Bajtala, George Larnyoh and Eddie Quansah from W. S. Gilbert's original 1885 libretto and Arthur Sullivan's score. The show premiered on 24 April 1975 at the Cambridge Theatre in London, where it ran for 472 performances before going on a national tour. A cast album was produced in October 1975 featuring 12 of the show's songs, and a medley of numbers from the finale of act one. It was recorded at Basing Street Studios in London, then finished at Island Studios.