The Mikado visits Leatherhead

Just about two years after our visit to a very expensive Mikado at the London Coliseum (see reference 1), we went last Friday to the Thorndyke at Leatherhead to see the Godalming Operatic Society do it, an outfit which has done it roughly every ten years since 1930. They look to be a similar outfit to the Gosport Amateur Operatic Society with which our late naval aunt and uncle were once much involved - and the book of which can be obtained from one W. Delicate.

We have also, in the meantime, prompted I think by an article in the NYRB, taken in the 1999 film about the making of the Mikado called 'Topsy-Turvy', which we thought rather good and which, oddly, I do not appear to have noticed here. Inter alia, T. Spall very good as the Mikado. Another case, perhaps, of a show about a show being better than the show itself.

This new version had the merit, unlike the London version, of being done in proper Japanese flavoured costume, with the only bit which irritated me being the joke wooden chopper wielded at one point by the Lord High Executioner. The long sword used in 1948 and illustrated in the programme looked much better. But on this occasion, by way of compensation, we had one member of the cast being a fluent speaker of Japanese and sporting a Japanese wife.

Sundry contemporary & local references had been plugged into the libretto at various places, presumably places designed for such.

Theatre operation seemed a little amateurish, perhaps reflecting the difficulty the place has staying open at all. A pity as it is rather a good theatre (complete with so very sixties shuttered concrete) now they have proper seats; a theatre where we once saw Sir Peter Hall no less apologising for his rendering of Hamlet, one of the first performances before the show set off on tour or off to London or something. A version which I think included Hamlet in the buff at one point. So given that Leatherhead regularly features in posh lists as containing one of the highest densities of very posh people in the country, despite the London overspill estates, where have all the punters gone?

But, theatre aside, this amateur version of the Mikdado compared well with what I remember of the professional version. Perhaps not quite as slick, but I think it worked better for me being in a smaller theatre. And on this occasion, the show did not seem to show its age as much as it did two years ago. Maybe we will take in a third version should one appear - although we have rather been put off the forthcoming 'Pirates of Penzance' by the prices being asked by the Coliseum; we must have been feeling richer two years ago.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nanki-poo.html.