Opera company brings a weekend of ‘The Mikado’

Friday, Aug. 8, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DICKSON MERCER Katisha (Alicia Cordelle), center, storms in to whisk away Nanki-Poo (Antony Zwerdling), right, from Yum-Yum (Keesun Kwon), left, in the comic opera, ‘‘The Mikado.” E-Mail This Article | Print This Story   If you go The Light Opera Company of Southern Maryland production of the comic opera ‘‘The Mikado” is at 7 p.m. Aug. 9 and 4 p.m. Aug. 10 at the St. John Vianney Family Life Center. Tickets are $25 and $20 for senior citizens, students and military. St. John Vianney Family Life Center is at 105 Vianney Lane, Prince Frederick. Call 410-586-2802. E-mail sandrajarrett@comcast.net. Go to www.lightoperamaryland.org.

A few minutes before rehearsal, members of the cast of ‘‘The Mikado” were milling about the banquet hall. Sean Pflueger, who will play Pooh-Bah, was off by himself, working out the haughty tone of his character, and a few noblemen were working out a song.

The main task for most was tinkering with the colorful Japanese costumes on loan from the Victorian Lyric Opera Company. Plastic packages of Japanese samurai wigs, meanwhile, were splayed across the tables.

Guiding the rehearsal was Sandra Jarrett, the director of the Light Opera Company as well this latest production, which she credits for long ago sparking her ‘‘operatic epiphany.”

Then there is Jack Williamson from Wildwood. Williamson, who is ‘‘pushing 90” and is set to play the title role, had some difficulty tying his robe properly around his waist, but it is doubtful he will have much trouble on opening night.

This is Williamson’s fourth appearance in ‘‘The Mikado” since 1938, and he said he is reasonably sure that his parents met while acting in a 1907 production.

Williamson, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, is well-versed in the Gilbert and Sullivan catalogue.

‘‘Back in the old days,” he said, meaning before the advent of ‘‘Oklahoma” and ‘‘Carousel,” ‘‘that’s all there was.”

‘‘Despite my youthful appearance,” he added. ‘‘I go way back.”

‘‘The Mikado,” a two-act, comic opera, opened at London’s Savoy Theater in 1885.

The story opens with a gathering of men in the Japanese town of Titipu. The wandering minstrel, Nanki-Poo (Antony Zwerdling), arrives on the scene seeking information about his love, Yum-Yum (Keesun Kwon), who is slated to marry Ko-Ko (John Scheer), Lord High Executioner. They are surrounded by gossiping noblemen (Bob Boyd, John Withers, John Jacob and Mike Judd) and Pish-Tush (Brian Shircliffe).

If these names seem as if they are derived more from English baby talk than traditional Japanese names, well, that is because the former is indeed the source. Part of the appeal of ‘‘The Mikado” is that the humor and overall tone are frequently quite difficult to place. Whose codes and decorum, exactly, are being made fun of, the Japanese or the British?

One learns that Gilbert and Sullivan were poking fun at British systems and bureaucracies. What an odd, funny thing to hear a stuffy British tone from a gaggle of characters in Japanese costumes.

Other cast members include the schoolgirls, performed by Rosa Mesowski, Robyn Martinez and Missy Tevis. Maria Barnes Dolan plays Pitti-Sing and Alicia Cordelle plays the mighty Katisha. Shawn Burke-Storer will direct the orchestra.

Jarrett has serendipitously assembled a cast which, through the lens of appearance, seems right to bring to life the absurd plot twists, dramatically comic songs and the pervasive technique of meiosis (drastic understatement) which so define ‘‘The Mikado”

When the Mikado, for instance, declares that Titupu must host a beheading or be deemed a village, and when the noblemen suggest that Ko-Ko (already scheduled to be executed for the crime of flirting) would make a convenient candidate, Ko-Ko offers a classic defense: ‘‘Self-decapitation, he says, ‘‘is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt ... and very awkward.”