Skylight’s ‘Hot Mikado’ a swingin’ nightclub reset
Inspired by a legendary 1939 production starring Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, Skylight Music Theatre's "Hot Mikado" resets the Gilbert & Sullivan musical as a Cotton Club extravaganza circa 1942.
"It's a nightclub. We call it The Hot House," said director Austene Van. Not only is she putting the production's band onstage, she's even seating several audience members at onstage bistro tables during each performance.
The production opens Sept. 29 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway.
Mike Todd produced the first "Hot Mikado" on Broadway in 1939, with Bojangles Robinson, in the title role, and fellow members of the all-black cast in far-out costumes, singing jazzy, bluesy and gospel reorchestrations of the original G&S songs. Todd's "Hot Mikado" competed with a rival production, the "Swing Mikado." In a 1939 Pittsburgh Courier review comparing the two shows, Billy Rowe judged "Hot Mikado" superior and more daring. The box office reacted the same way.
Unfortunately, only a short video clip of the production (and its extraordinary costumes) survives.
Inspired by the 1939 production, David H. Bell and Rob Bowman cooked up a new version of "Hot Mikado" in 1986, drawing on similar musical styles. For example, "Three Little Maids" is sung in the swinging close-harmony style of the Andrews Sisters.
However, the BellBowman "Hot Mikado" sticks closely to Gilbert & Sullivan's goofy story, in which the knuckleheaded Mikado declares flirting a capital offense and the Lord High Executioner looks for a suitable victim, while the Mikado's adult son Nanki-Poo tries to avoid the ardent cougar Katisha so he can marry Yum-Yum.
The Skylight's production has a multi-ethnic cast, with Sounds of Blackness vocalist Jamecia Bennett as the fiercely determined Katisha. Like every "Mikado," hot or classic, the show asks us to believe an attractive performer with a powerful voice is so repulsive men would flee her on sight.
"She's ugly inside, that's how we're handling it," Van said. "People are usually ugly when they think they're ugly."
The staging also treats Katisha as a bit of a vamp. When Katisha talks about her elbow having a fascination that few can resist, "she's actually showcasing other things," Van said with a conspiratorial laugh.