The Mikado

Jonathan Miller set his wellknown production of The Mikado staged for the English National Opera in a British seaside resort of the 1920s The result complete with a chorus of gentlemen of Japan as cartoonlike British peers emphatically underscores the Englishness of the satire The occasional non sequiturs like a bunch of gentry dressed for Ascot and singing in Japanese are loonily fun and no more absurd than the fantasyland Japan that Gilbert and Sullivan invented The time frame though seems little more than an excuse for a smart blackandwhite production design