THEATER: Sushi and Soul

The Hot Mikado is gospel but not a la Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan purists will hate the The Hot Mikado, at Washington's Ford's Theatre and apparently on its way to Broadway. Musically, they will deplore the conversion of W.S. Gilbert's candybox-pretty score into swing, jazz and gospel arrangements that bounce like the 1940s. Lyrically, they will ask themselves which is worse, rewriting some of Arthur Sullivan's urbane verse (one big laugh comes when Katisha, a scorned lady of the court played as a black street diva by Loretta Devine, screeches, "You piss me off!") or rendering much of what is left all but unintelligible through vocal pyrotechnics and general high spirits...

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