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Brian Howell
Mar 28, 2016, 12:34:32 PM3/28/16
to Ipse Dixit
The Lamplighters' Musical Theatre troupe of San Francisco are internationally recognized interpreters of the works of Gilbert & Sullivan. They are the only non-British company in history to win the Grand Prize at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in England--which was, to the Brits, on par with what the Judgement of Paris was to the French.
Next year's program includes arguably the best work in the G&S canon: The Mikado or The Town of Titipu. (Many G&S operettas have subtitles; The HMS Pinafore's is The Lass Who Loved a Sailor.)
Like all of G&S's work, it is a satire on Victorian British society, albeit masked by a lush facade of Japanese trappings, in attire, movements, and even some speech patterns. It also includes yellowface make-up. These are all consistent with WS Gilbert's highly detailed original staging and are instrumental to the integrity and character of the operetta. It is well established that WS Gilbert was entranced by Japanese society. Watch Mike Leigh's excellent movie Topsy Turvy, which dramatizes Gilbert's confrontation with Japanese culture and his intense focus on accurately recreating key aspects of it--within a theatrical context--as accurately as possible on the stage.
I am sure you can see what's coming. Last week, the Lamplighters sent an internal notice to their members:
There has been a lot of activity in the Lamplighters office over the last couple of days. Serious concerns expressed by some of our fellow performing companies have persuaded us that the traditional setting of The Mikado is fraught with too many sensitive problems in today's cultural climate. The artistic team has therefore determined that we will move the setting of our 2016 production away from the traditional fictional Japanese village of Titipu, most likely into a setting in Victorian England. This is a very recent decision and artistic and production concepts and details are being actively considered and discussed. There is a lot of work ahead to make this change successful, while maintaining the integrity of the show that we all love.
Of course, that final clause is utter bullshit: you cannot maintain the integrity of an artistic work by expurgating its foundational attributes, regardless of their potential to offend the weak-minded and overly sensitized. To me, this is akin to removing the word nigger from Tom Sawyer. It is, perhaps, the propensity to offend that gives these works their greatest value; providing a lens by which we can study shifts in culture and values, and then smugly exult from our ever-so-more-enlightened mountaintop.
If this PC-induced cowardice continues to fester, we will only be ever more poorer, as increasing numbers of songs, plays, operas, books, and paintings will be summarily thrown into the dustbin of political correctness.
Okay, so maybe they could do away with the pancake make-up. Admittedly, nobody does Jolson authentically anymore.
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