The adaption is set in a private school camping trip which I must admit, I did not realise until I read it in the programme. I feel the production was supposed to be contextualised within a certain setting, however, I felt it was staged rather randomly in a wood far away from any towns or villages.
THE MIKADO – Touring
I’ve said this lots of times before but you can’t spoof a spoof – when written in 1885 The Mikado was already a parody, satirising British Imperial politics and institutions by transposing them to a fictionalised Japan, and lampooning the fashion for orientalism.
THE MIKADO – Touring
The production is set in the grounds of a 1950s-ish school camping trip, a canny move which neatly sidesteps some of the Orientalism issues and refocuses G+S’s satire on the English political establishment.
THE MIKADO – Touring
Sasha Regan sets her Mikado in the tents around the camp fire of an English public school camping trip in the 1950s. Here, the bullied boy of the class falls asleep and dreams that his classmates and teachers have trotted off to Titipu, with the gentlemen of Japan.