Mika-deo-do

In Chicago last September the Federal Theatre poured old wine into a new bottle and got the whole town tipsy. Their Mikado, with an all-Negro cast, a South Sea Island setting and swing interpolations, became a smash hit overnight, in five months broke all Federal Theatre records by playing to 250,000 people and clearing $35,000 at a $1.10 top.

By the first of this year two Manhattan producers--Michael Todd and Alfred de Liagre Jr.--were planning separate swing productions of The Mikado on Broadway. When the Federal Theatre decided to bring its own production East, de Liagre bowed himself out, but Todd, charging WPA with obstructing private enterprise, accelerated his plans, engaged Hoofer Bill Robinson for the title role. Promptly the Federal Theatre closed its show in Chicago, last week opened it--three weeks ahead of Todd's--in Manhattan.

To the splashiest and most exciting opening night in Federal Theatre history flocked jitterbugs, Nosey Parkers, Harlem, Cafe Society. To it also, with hands upon their apprehensive hearts, marched Gilbert & Sullivan diehards, to endure an hour and see injustice done. To it also--one of her rare first nights since her husband became President--went Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, brought the audience applauding to its feet as she sailed down the aisle.*

On Broadway, as in Chicago, the swing Mikado became overnight a smash hit. But Broadway was not seriously shaken. For in spite of all temptations to run wild with syncopations, the Federal Theatre's Mikado remains an English one. Four times the show's husky-duskies break out into a rash of swing, but otherwise they play The Mikado straight. They provide a pleasant, professional performance that can stand on its own legs; but with the D'Oyly Carte troupe providing a subtler and more finished show a few blocks away, daring would have been better than diffidence.

For what The Mikado loses on the roundabouts it never quite makes up on the swing. The audience got what it came for only when the Three Little Maids from School strutted what they had learned there, when the Mikado (Edward Fraction) bust out into a cakewalk, when the flowers that bloomed in the spring gave way to a jamboree that had nothing to do with the case, but proved mighty, mighty tra-la. The Federal Theatre boldly moved The Mikado from Japan to the South Seas. It should have been bolder still and moved it, shag and shaggage, to Harlem.

* After protesting the ban on Negro Singer Marian Anderson's appearance in Washington, Mrs. Roosevelt pointedly attended Negro shows two nights running: Harlempress Ethel Waters' Mamba's Daughters, the all-Negro Mikado.

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