Gilbert & Sullivan's 'The Mikado'

A New-Look ‘Mikado’ Comes to Westbury

The classic Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera “The Mikado” will be seen in a whole new way in Westbury when the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island brings its 2020 production of the beloved show to the Westbury Memorial Public Library on Sunday, April 26, at 2 p.m.

Directed by Tony Tambasco, with music directed by Deiran Manning, this all-new “Mikado” recasts the most famous of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas to be set on Long Island’s Gold Coast in the 1920s, the era of the flappers, silent movies and “The Great Gatsby.”

“I have attempted to recover the spirit of Gilbert & Sullivan's intentions with a production that holds a mirror up to the present day, while also engaging in light-hearted fairy-tale-telling,” Tambasco said. “Setting `The Mikado’ on a fantasy of Long Island of 100 years ago allows us to activate the `Gatsby’ mythology that is a part of the cultural heritage of Long Island in the service of telling Gilbert and Sullivan's comic fairy tale of a community overcoming the nonsensical cruelty imposed on them.”

The score for “The Mikado” is packed with famous songs, including the lovely ballad “The Sun, Whose Rats Are All Ablaze,” the rattling patter song “I’ve Got a Little List,” the ingenious trio “I Am So Proud” and the wistful “Titwillow.”  The story is a merry farce that’s as funny now as it was in 1885, when the show premieres, and virtually defines the idea of “fun for the whole family.”

The cast includes more than a dozen of the company’s finest singers and dancers, more than meeting the challenge of “The Mikado.” Ramon Tenefrancia plays Nanki-Poo, the wandering minstrel who’s secretly the son of the Mikado (Jonathan Quarant).  Christine Dentato is Yum-Yum, Nanki-Poo’s secret love, with Henry Horstmann as her guardian Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner.  Ashley Domenech and Darby Maxwell play Yum-Yum’s schoolmates Pitti-Sing and Peep-Bo, with Kenneth Kopolovics as the pompous Pooh-Bah and Chris Jurak as the wily Pish-Tush. Valerie Grehan plays the fearsome aristocrat Katisha, who claimed Nanki-Poo in marriage and won’t take “No” as an answer.

“’The Mikado’ is a Gilbert & Sullivan opera unlike any other, satirizing English society through a lens that consisted of Japan in the original production and 1920s Long Island in the current show.  It’s the most popular comic opera ever written, the only one of the Gilbert & Sullivan operas popular even in non-English-speaking countries and the first ever to be made into a movie, in 1939.  It has been a hit on Broadway as “The Hot Mikado,” and remains arguably the most popular work of music theater ever.