Sasha Regan’s All-Male “The Mikado”: Wilton’s Music Hall Graces Alley, Shadwell London E1 8JB.

4****: Clare Colvin

Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular operetta The Mikado is the third of Sasha Regan’s all-male G & S productions, following on the successful HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. The original Mikado was set in fictional Titipu, at the court of the Emperor of Japan, where Nanki Poo, the son of the Emperor, has returned disguised as a wandering minstrel in search of his true love Yum Yum. She has been engaged to Ko-Ko the Lord High Executioner, while Nanki Poo faces the prospect of a forced marriage to the Emperor’s daughter-in-law elect.

Sasha Regan has kept to the plot and the twists and turns of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s sublime score but jettisoned the Japanese setting; which saves any dispute rising about racist issues. Instead, we are in a boy scouts holiday camp where the boys, tearing around in baggy shorts, act out The Mikado as holiday entertainment. Against a painted backdrop of trees and an on-stage movable canvas tent for scene changes, characters make the switch from mock Japanese to equivalent English roles.

Thus the song “a wand’ring minstrel I” is sung by Declan Egan as a silly ass Bertie Hugh rather than a nincompoop Nanki Poo, and the three maids involved in the tangled love plot - as confusing as in the original - are Miss Violet Plumb, formerly Yum Yum (Sam Kipling), Bluebell Tring (Owen Clayton) and Hebe Flo (Richard Russell Edwards). Musical director Anto Buckley plays the single piano that substitutes for the original orchestral score. The piano blends well with the vocal talents of the 16-strong cast and ensemble, while Kipling displays a fine falsetto in Violet Plumb’s song to the Sun.

The second act makes more of the cross-dressing comedy, including a hilarious group beauty session. Overall there’s plenty of zip and a mood of schoolboy fun with little campness beyond the on-stage tent. The historical setting provides part of the pleasure and Wilton’s Music Hall, which opened as a music hall 1853, is a perfect venue. Hidden away in Grace’s Alley, behind Cable Street and the thundering trains of Docklands Light Railway, the 300-seater hall is a hidden gem of East End London.

Creatives

Director: Sasha Regan

Musical director: Anto Buckley

Choreographer: Adam Haigh

Designer: Ryan Dawson Laight

Lighting designer: Alistair Lindsay

Production pictures: Mark Senior