By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
SAPAC photo
"Hot Mikado," where the full-sized cast has full-sized fun!
You just gotta love the experience, the gleeful happiness that comes rushing out of Southern Arizona Performing Arts Company's lively production of “Hot Mikado,” a 1940's styled take-off on Gilbert & Sullivan's classic opera, “The Mikado,” satirizing the British government's own fondness for inefficiency and corruption.
This cast of 13 singers and dancers is having so much fun at the Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre, it is difficult not to jump up and join them. Halfway through the company's debut season, there's no doubt Tucson's newest musial theater aggregation is ready to stand and be counted.
Simplifying the costumes and sets, while adding energy to their performance, SAPAC has a firm grip on the heart of this clever tribute to true love and tap dancing.
But first, a little history.
Legend has it that in 1939, two groups in Manhattan had the idea to juice up the polite and proper setting of Gilbert & Sullivan's “Mikado” opera. They called it “The Hot Mikado,” using jazzy gospel-soulful music arrangements and flashy zoot suits to tell the story of a fictitious time in Japan when flirting was considered a capitol offense.
A time when just a quick wink or encouraging smile in public could find a person meeting the Mikado's own court executioner.
Then in 1986 David H. Bell and Rob Bowman, with soul music and the free-love revolution surging around them, thought it was the perfect time to re-appreciate such a quaint reminder that romance didn't always come so easy.
Shocked to discover not much was saved from those 1939 shows, Bell and Bowman wrote their own version, titled “Hot Mikado.” Regional theater companies coast to coast have been producing it ever since.
Director and choreographer Kelli Workman, combining talents with longtime associates Thea Hinojosa and Jessica Lumm, have made this “Hot Mikado” really pop. Crisply choreographed and boldly sung, the plot hews fairly close to the original.
With a quintet of competent musicians squeezed into a band box at the back of the stage, we travel to the land of Titipu where a less-competent trumpet player, Nanki-Poo (Christopher Esguerra), has been hopelessly in love with Yum-Yum (Aliyah Douglas) for at least a year.
But Yum-Yum is promised to the influential Lord High Executioner (Tyler Wright) and Nanki-Poo is supposed to marry Katisha (Jackie Stewart), an older woman of means. But after considerable tomfoolery and some raw boned gospel soul singing that goes for the gut, the Mikado himself (Matthew Holter) comes on the scene to make it all good for a sprightly grand finale.
Though the cast is large, this truly is an ensemble performance. All the roles, large and small, get everyone's full respect and attention. The future for SAPAC is bright, and so is “Hot Mikado.”
The show continues through Jan. 26 at the Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre in the Historic Y, 738 N. Fifth Ave., with performances Friday-Saturday, Jan. 24-25, at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 26, at 2 p.m.
Tickets are $25 general admission; $20 military, students and teachers. All seats are reserved.
For further details and reservations, 520-261-0915, boxoffice@sapactucson.org, online at www.sapactucson.org or sapactucson.tix.com
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