REVIEWS

The Hot Mikado - Watermill, Newbury
By Benedict Nightingale

Don't be put off by the title. If the air conditioning in the Watermill didn't work, Craig Revel Horwood's 14-person cast would have ended up incinerated by a killer-mix of their own energy and the encroaching heat wave. But this tiny, unpretentious theatre is hot in another sense, having just picked up two Tony awards for its revival of Sweeney Todd, including one for Sarah Travis, who has again excelled herself in arranging Robert Bowman's 1985 version of Gilbert and Sullivan's score.

And even if, like me, you are a Savoy Opera aficionado, don't be put off by the way she and Bowman have jazzed up G and S. Yes, the mixture of felt hats, vests and sashes on display suggests that they've tumbled out of an outré nightclub in the Greenwich Village section of old Tokyo. But I defy anyone to resist the performers' exuberance and professionalism - and any red or even pink- blooded male not to be enchanted by Nicola Hughes's Yum-Yum, who combines wit, charisma, a strong singing voice and even a bit of twinkle in the toe department.

As in the original, she's beloved by Nanki-Poo, heir to the throne but disguised as a wandering musican, yet affianced to Ko-Ko, who is Lord High Executioner. Gilbert's story survives, along with many of his lyrics, though some are hard to hear since, in keeping with the Watermill's eccentric aesthetic, almost every cast member also has a trumpet, sax or clarinet to blast. But I did pick up the gratifying fact that Jeffrey Harmer's Ko-Ko now has celebrity worshippers and Sven-Göran Eriksson on his famous little list. Anyway, the three little maids become the hyped-up Andrews Sisters of Titibu. Sing a Merry Madrigal escalates into Swing a Merry Madrigal. Junix Inocian's imposing Mikado arrives telling his subjects to "chill out", which happily they don't, preferring to bop and tap when he reveals his Object All Sublime. Tit Willow is little changed, but surprisingly funny, thanks to the joint reactions of Karen Mann's maudlin Katisha and her bourbon bottle to its sentiments and sentimentalities. But where were The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring? Maybe I missed them in the hubbub of torch songs, gospel and all that jazz. Inocian gets an inevitable laugh when he says: "If Gilbert and Sullivan could see me now." But I'm not sure Gilbert at least would have minded. Didn't he say that nothing was as bad as respectability? And respectable The Hot Mikado isn't.