Revival

If you want to know who we are,

We are gentlemen of Japan. . . .

Feet tapped, on many a face beamed a happy smile of recognition and some spectators even hummed as they heard this antiphonal opening chorus on the stage of

Manhattan's St. James Theatre one night last week. The Mikado was being revived and delighted Savoyards, a distinct and folksy type of audience which seems to remain in hiding between Gilbert & Sullivan revivals, were on hand in large and enthusiastic numbers.* Librettos were on sale in the lobby (and up the street for 10-c- less), but these were for neophytes and not for the initiated, who have stacks of Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan's records at home, know Sir William Schwenk Gilbert's polysyllabic lyrics by heart.

The cast which Producer Milton Aborn presents is about the same that appeared in his revivals two years ago. Frank Moulan, a little monkey of a man who delighted St. Louis Municipal Operagoers many a summer season in the past, takes the part of Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner who finds himself in danger of having to execute himself. Yum-Yum, one of his wards, is Hizi Koyke. Her suitor, the Mikado's wandering minstrel son, is played by Roy Cropper, a young man with a pleasingly liquid tenor.

The man who most delights local Gilbert & Sullivan audiences is veteran William Danforth. As the Mikado, garbed in a terrifying Shinto costume, he executes elephantine pirouettes, disgustedly squelches his interrupting female relatives with explosive "Phaughs!"

Next week Producer Aborn will present The Yeomen of the Guard, a more serious Gilbert & Sullivan operetta not often revived. If he does as well as he used to do, Frank Moulan will get in some heavy dramatic licks as the gleeman with the croak of a frog-o. Of the present production it may be said, with the chorus:

And I am right,

And you are right,

And everything is quite correct!

* Savoyard--from the Savoy Theatre, London, where many of the operettas were originally produced.

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