Banzai!
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado opens tomorrow night at the Bellingham Theatre Guild and not a moment too soon. We have been rehearsing since February and it’s time to suck it up and blow away an audience.
Needless to say, any G & S show is a daunting undertaking for a community theatre. That means there is good news and bad news. Hearts and flowers first.
Our wizard master carpenter, Joe Super, has once again constructed a set that evokes gasps from the audience when the curtain opens. Costumer Martha Hutchings has assembled an extraordinarily colorful spectrum of kimonos that makes us look like a hatch of hippie butterflies.
For instance, I am playing Pish-Tush, a Japanese nobleman who is just a touch light in his loafers. My kimono is patterned with a mass of pansies. Enough said.
The cast is highlighted by some serious pros along with some very talented youngsters. It is no easy task casting a show that requires both top notch musicians and gifted actors. Director Kathy Murray, who has deep roots both at the Bellingham Theatre Guild and at Western Washington University, has done her usual fine job of balancing these demands. Of course, securing such talents requires certain compromises. As one who is both an actor and director, I am not enamored of role sharing. Schedules being what they are, talented people are in demand and can’t always commit to an exhausting rehearsal and performance schedule. Thus, we have two actors sharing the role of Yum-Yum and two others the role of Katisha.
The reason I cringe at such arrangements is that one of the actors sharing the role is almost always far better than the other. This creates challenges in the rest of the cast because we have to adjust our performances to differing levels of ability. Our Yum-Yums, fortunately, are both gifted vocalists. One, however, is rather manic in her portrayal while the other is rather serene. Both are excellent, but the actors who work with them have to adapt to the different styles on succeeding nights. This is not easy, to say the least.
One of the actors playing Katisha is truly amazing both as an actress and a vocalist. The other actor is a mediocre vocalist and very inexperienced in stagecraft. This affects the energy levels of the whole cast as we try to achieve some sort of consistency in our performances while dealing with two widely divergent talents.
Necessity is a mother.
Our lead male, playing the role of Nanki-Poo, has a perfect voice for the part. He is a gifted tenor who can hit high C without batting an eye. His acting skills, however, leave something to be desired. Fortunately, Nanki-Poo is a role that can be played by someone with a 2x4 up his rectum. He is so naturally nerdy that you almost forget he has the thespic range of Ben Affleck.
Our vocal coach is a superbly talented teacher named Rob Viens. He is incredibly demanding, but somehow makes us all love him in spite of that. I have to say that I have learned more from him during this production that I ever did in years of spotty vocal training. He has made me sound far better than I really am.
Our Achilles heel is the orchestra. Community theatres don’t have the budget to hire professional musicians. Gilbert and Sullivan scores are unbelievably demanding. We spent months trying to scrape together an adequate orchestra. Most of the best musicians in the area play with the highly regarded Whatcom Symphony Orchestra. They managed to schedule a performance right in the middle of our Mikado run.
So much for trying to get the cream of the crop. With a lot of highly coercive methods, we managed to assemble a rather motley crew. There are about half a dozen solid musicians and another dozen very marginal players. This would be workable if we had a really gifted conductor.
Here’s the really bad news. The only conductor we could find is a high school band teacher who must have been hired on a low bid contract. The poor man is far out of his depth when trying to deal with a very demanding score.
He seems incapable of conducting at a steady tempo. Our cast of vocalists includes a lot of seriously capable musicians. We launch into our numbers with great élan only to discover that the conductor keeps changing tempos. You would not believe how demoralizing it is to get into an aria only to find that the orchestra is either several beats behind or ahead.
Pros that we are, we adjust only to find that the conductor has changed tempos again and we either have to play catch up or slow down so that the orchestra can catch up. Try to act during a musical number under those circumstances.
Worse yet, he doesn’t read music all that well. I sat backstage trying to figure out what was going on and heard him call out a letter reference in the score eight bars before it was due. Then I heard one of the musicians point out that a particular number was written in 2/4 time and he was conducting in 4/4. This does not inspire confidence in the cast, to say the least.
I called an informal meeting of the principal players and pointed out the obvious: we can’t rely on the orchestra to be there when we need them, so we’d better take the lead and hope that the conductor can follow.
At final dress rehearsal last night, the conductor cued the orchestra far too early at least half a dozen times, thereby drowning out some crucial lines and thoroughly disrupting everyone’s timing. Excuse me, but can’t this bozo even read the script? Apparently not.
So we embark on opening night with a magnificent set, glorious costumes, an abundance of musical and acting talent, only to have it compromised by an incompetent orchestra director. God help us all.
We’ll come through in spite of this and put on a helluva show. Our audience on preview night gave us a standing O even though we knew it was a pretty shaky situation. Old pros who have been through everything live theatre can throw at them will prevail.
We will, we will rock you.
11:46:17 PM 
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