After more than a century, a great troupe disbands
There were empty seats in London's Adelphi Theater a fortnight ago, and those loyalists who had come were applauding their own memories as much as the D'Oyly Carte production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Listeners knew not just Nanki-Poo's Wandering Minstrel ballad by heart, they knew Pooh-Bah's dialogue. They would have grumbled if any of the costumes, designed by Charles Ricketts in 1926, had been changed. But of course, there were no changes.
It is a D'Oyly Carte tradition that Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner,...