review: Il Ducato

Several years ago The Lamplighters light opera company decided to respond to charges that Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado was derogatory towards Japanese people by re-setting it in Renaissance Italy. (I have not heard if the opinions of persons of Italian descent were solicited.) I didn't see that production, but they've revived it so I went to see it.

Let's just say that the restaging did not spoil the show and that it was an utterly magnificent production with hilarious acting and tremendous singing, and get on to the question, what did they change? Well, costumes, of course, which I'm not really qualified to discuss. As for wording,

Japan = Milan, as if it were a country, which it was until Napoleon steamrollered over it, and thus

Japanese = Milanese

The Mikado = Il Ducato, though all references to the Emperor have been left intact

Some other names were pronounced identically. Ko-Ko = Coco. Pooh-Bah = Poobà. Katisha = Catiscià. Others are different. Nanki-Poo = Niccolù, which isn't at all the same. Yum-Yum = Amiam, which is pronounced as if it were Um-Yum.

Titipu, the town = Tiramisu, or Tirmasu in songs to preserve the scansion

Opening number ("If you want to know who we are / We are gentlemen of Japan") = the only one rewritten. They're gentlemen of Milan, of course, and describe themselves as poets and artists.

"My father, the Lucius Junius Brutus of his race" = "of his day," very nice and subtle change

"Perhaps if I were to withdraw from Japan, and travel in Europe for a couple of years" = "Perhaps if I were to withdraw from Milan, and travel in Japan for a couple of years," clever

"O ni! bikkuri shakkuri to!" the words they interrupt Katisha with = "Amor vincent omnia," which really makes more sense

"Miya sama, miya sama" etc., the Mikado's entrance song = "O Fortuna," words from the opening of Orff's Carmina Burana, but sung to Sullivan's pseudo-Japanese tune

"I seized him by his little pig-tail" = "by the scruff of his neck"

"Gone abroad! His address?" "Knightsbridge" = "North Beach," a traditionally Italian neighborhood of San Francisco

"[Nanki-Poo's real name] might have been on his pocket-handkerchief, but Japanese don't use pocket-handkerchiefs" = cut entirely. I once saw a production, with no change of setting, where this line was replaced with "It might have been on his American Express card, but he must have left home without it"

Apart from the change of setting, there were the usual re-writes of the "Little List" song, written by Lawrence Ewing as Coco. He denounced promoters of self-driving cars and AI, and got particular cheers for "All billionaires who want to be the leader of the pack / Let's put them all in orbit and forget to bring them back." Chung-Wai Soong as Il Ducato made a few small alterations to "Let the punishment fit the crime," but my favorite moment was when he says his son is going about as a Second Trombone, he takes a peek down into the orchestra pit. At the meet-and-greet afterwards, I complimented the actor for this little breach of the fourth wall, and he said, "Where else would you go looking for a Second Trombone?"

Of the cast in general I can't speak too highly. They were just magnificent, delightful. Special note to Sara Couden, who simply blew away the part of Catiscià, both in singing and acting. Lawrence Ewing as Coco is a veteran Lamplighters funnyman, a different type of actor than Couden but equally good, and their long scene together in Act 2 was as completely perfect as any G&S I've ever seen. The show began its run here and is concluding at Lesher in two weeks. It was so good that I'm considering going again.