So, that was a fun weekend!

A little background. My British G&S colleague Rachel founded and runs a scrappy little theater company in the UK called Forbear!. They do really interesting small-scale versions of the G&S operas and tour them all over the UK. And then my American G&S colleague Will runs a scrappy little opera company here in NYC called Utopia Opera, which also does G&S (and other operas) on a small scale. Will and Rachel are great friends, Will frequently goes across the pond to music-direct and act with Forbear!, and he brought Rachel over here a couple of years ago to do Utopia, Ltd. I frequently play in the orchestra for Utopia shows, most recently for Jesus Christ Superstar, which was a blast.

Rachel had developed a concept for a Mikado that would embrace the basic ‘fantasy country’ concept, but remove it from the Japanese setting so to avoid all the sturm und drang that staging Mikado has engendered over the last couple of decades. So she set it with a sword’n’sorcery theme in the magical kingdom of Pa’gaen. Other than changing the names of the characters (and the town) to similar sounding names that are not faux-cutesy Japanese, almost nothing else was changed. She and Will toured this production all over the UK over the last several months.

And then Will brought it here, as a co-production of Utopia Opera. Seven of the UK principals (including Rachel, both director and soprano lead) came over, and a new US cast filled in the rest. And we performed the production for the first time with a full orchestra, which I was part of.

So, anyway, it was lots of fun, very well-received. The orchestra only had two rehearsals, plus mini-rehearsals before some performances. The orchestra itself was excellent, many good players and a very musical conductor. I was playing the 2nd horn part, which meant I had no high notes to worry about. And I had a bunch of friends in the cast, and many more friends (a lot of people I’d just done Pinafore and Zoo with) came to see it.

I’d discovered Mikado in college – it had been the show the G&S company did the year before I showed up, and everyone gushed about what a hilarious production it was. (Brad and I heard the audiotape, it definitely was. College productions often have a goofy energy to them that work beautifully for G&S and you don’t often see in other productions.) I’d seen it in many productions, had music-directed it back in the 2010’s, and had done chorus for it just last year at the Festival. It’s a brilliant show, with an equally strong score and script. (The dialogue might have the highest percentage of one-lines in the canon, and the show’s plot, which is largely about maneuvering around the Mikado’s insane laws, is kind of amazing.) But it’s easy to get Mikado’d out if you know it too well, and one of the great things about this production was that it reminded me of what a great show it is and how delightful it can be.

I was also impressed with the musical direction, both from Will (who was playing Klow-Cow, so not conducting) and Eric, the conductor. They really delved into a lot of musical detail that I may have never bothered to do myself, and the show was better for it. I am taking notes for myself, that is for sure. (Granted, the shows I conduct often are thrown up so quickly there’s not time for fussy detail, but I would have thought that of this show as well, and yet they made it happen.)

So we had one performance Friday night, two on Saturday (plus a mini-concert after Saturday night!) and a Sunday matinee. And the show got better and better as we got more and more comfortable. For a show I’ve done before, and wasn’t expecting much from other than a good time and a chance to play in a theatrical sandbox with my friends, I was really struck by how much artistic value I (we) got out of it. A real pleasure.

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Next up, a nice long weekend with nothing scheduled, and then the Planets concert after that.