Revamped MIKADO Set for NYGASP's 2016-17 Season After Previous Protests; Lineup Announced!

New YorK Gilbert & Sullivan Players, America's preeminent professional Gilbert & Sullivan repertory company, announces its new and exciting 2016-17 Season featuring a brand new, fully staged production of The Mikado, two new jewel-box productions of Cox and Box along with Trial by Jury and, rounding out the repertory, the audience favorite Patience.

The 42nd season will kick-off on Saturday, October 29th (2pm and 7:30pm) and Sunday, October 30th (3pm) at Off-Broadway's intimate Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater (10 West 64th Street) with a premiere double bill of Mr. Sullivan's first successful comic opera Cox and Box (libretto by F. C. Burnand) and NYGASP's "Wand'ring Minstrels" quintet performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's beloved legal parody Trial by Jury. The season will continue December 28th - Jan. 8th with ten performances of an all-new production of The Mikado at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College (East 68th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues) and resumes with a limited spring run of Patience (April 29 & 30, 2017) also slated at the Kaye Playhouse. Season Tickets go on sale August 15th!

"Our new Mikado will blend the history and characters of Gilbert's Victorian England with artistic elements drawn from the country that inspired the work," stated NYGASP's Executive Director David Wannen, "all viewed through the lens of an extraordinarily beautiful Gilbertian fantasy. The creative team is hard at work realizing director David Auxier's vision for the production which will make Gilbert's satire of Victorian England more explicit through context, costuming, and direction."

Since NYGASP's announcement of The Mikado last September and the subsequent protest which prompted national controversy, NYGASP has been hard at work consulting with leaders in the Asian American community about next steps for this new production. The repertory company's efforts have included: the creation of an on-going advisory committee with key Asian-American arts leaders; participation in multiple in-person dialogues with executives and actors at Actors Equity Association; and representation as a featured panelist at the recent "Beyond Orientalism: The Forum" hosted by Asian American Arts Alliance, Asian American Performers' Action Coalition, Theatre Communications Group, and Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. In addition, NYGASP plans to host another opportunity for dialogue at Kaye Playhouse this fall.

Under the dynamic leadership of Artistic Director Albert Bergeret, The New YorK Gilbert & Sullivan Players has been hailed as "the leading custodian of the G&S classics" by New York Magazine and has created its own special niche in the cultural mosaic of New York City and the nation. Since its founding in 1974, the company has presented over 2,000 performances of the G&S masterpieces throughout the United States, Canada and England, captivating audiences of all ages. NYGASP's productions are charged with engaging contemporary entertainment values while retaining respect for the famous duo's comedic and musical genius.

In NYGASP's new production of The Mikado, the location is an imaginary town full of colorful characters - 3 little maids from school, a wandering minstrel, a hilariously corrupt public official, and a Lord High Executioner who may have a list of potential victims but is too tenderhearted to actually perform his duties. At the heart of this tale is a love story: a beautiful school girl loves the romantic wandering minstrel, but she is engaged to the executioner. This romantic triangle takes the usual course of thwarted romance, until the arrival first of the fearsome fiancé claiming the minstrel as her "perjured lover," and later of the emperor, or Mikado, himself - with his own list of punishments specially tailored to fit every crime. In order to resolve the ensuing complications, the inept executioner must use his wits to convince the most unappealing minstrel's fiancé to marry him instead - in record time.

Cox and Box
Based on the 1847 farce Box and Cox by John Maddison Morton --- Sergeant Bouncer, an old soldier, has a scheme to get double rent from a single room. By day he lets it to Mr. Box (a printer who is out all night) and by night to Mr. Cox (a hatter who works all day). Whenever either of them asks any awkward questions he sings at length about his days in the militia. His plan works well until Mr. Cox is, unexpectedly, given a day's holiday and the two lodgers meet. Left alone while Bouncer sorts out another room, they discover they share more than the same bed. Cox is engaged to the widow Penelope Ann Wiggins - a fate that Box escaped by pretending to commit suicide. They try gambling Penelope Ann away until news arrives that she has been lost at sea and has left her fortune to her 'intended'. They then both try to claim her for themselves. Another letter arrives - she has been found and will arrive any minute. Now they both try to disclaim her! However, she doesn't appear personally, instead leaving a letter to inform them that she intends to marry a Mr. Knox! Relieved, Cox and Box swear eternal friendship and discover, curiously enough, that they are long-lost brothers...

Trial by Jury is an over the top send up of the legal system. In this version, the audience is invited to join the jury as a quintet of "Wand'ring Minstrels" impersonate a lecherous judge, a gold digging plaintiff, a self professed cad of a defendant, a dim witted bailiff, and a sleazy female lawyer - turning the courtroom proceedings upside down with self serving arguments and musical merriment. This 45 minute farce is the perfect remedy for the boredom induced by long, drawn out trials on TV. Beautiful Angelina is suing dashing Edwin for "breech of promise of marriage". The courtroom buzzes with anticipation as Edwin enters and introduces himself as a lover of variety, especially in women. The Jurymen admit similar instincts, but condemn his lack of fidelity. The Court Usher (Bailiff) advises impartiality, as long as it favors the pretty girl, and introduces the Judge who tells how he obtained his appointment to the position by pretending to fall in love with, then ditching, a rich attorney's "elderly, ugly daughter". All of the men drool over Angelina As she admits to not being quite so unhappy about having been jilted as the law suit would make it appear. Angelina's lawyer paints a melodramatic picture of her client's mental anguish, so Edwin proposes to marry her on the spot while marrying someone else the next day. When the idiotic lawyer points out that this amounts to "burglary", (it should be bigamy), the courtroom breaks into a great operatic parody to express the "nice dilemma". All is resolved to everyone's satisfaction when the wealthy Judge agrees to marry Angelina himself and pays off Edwin for his trouble.

Patience or, Bunthorne's Bride - pretension, inflated egos, and the incompetence of those in power - no this is not about the current political scene but the grist of a Gilbert & Sullivan comic masterpiece Oscar Wilde and his friends may have been the objects of Gilbert's pointed satire, but this colorful send up of the 19th century aesthetic movement communicates the obvious parallels with other more familiar cults and their inherent excesses. Sullivan's score has an aesthetic beauty of its own but also wittily amplifies all of the outrageous juxtapositions between cult followers and their "uninitiated" counterparts. Throw in a dash of genuine pathos for a woman's subservient role in a repressive society and Patience further emerges as a relevant and timely piece. The phony poet Bunthorne has surrounded himself with adoring ladies, all formerly engaged to a regiment of heavy dragoon guards, who have now espoused the aesthetic cult at his suggestion. While the ladies fawn on him excessively, his affections have lighted on the simple village milkmaid, Patience, who has no understanding of either the current craze or the nature of romantic love. A rival, and equally trivial, poet, Grosvenor arrives to steal the attentions of both the fickle adoring crowd and the virtuous milkmaid, while the rigidly militaristic dragoons struggle valiantly to assume the role of willowy aesthetes - with decidedly mixed results. In the end the poseur Bunthorne's only choice for a bride is his own narcissism.

Limited Engagement of Cox and Box, paired with Trial by Jury will play October 29 & 30, 2016 at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater (10 W. 64th Street between Central Park West & Broadway). The season continues with at The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College (East 68th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues) as follows: The Mikado (December 28-31, 2016 and January 5-8, 2017); Patience (April 29-30, 2017). Season tickets will go on sale August 15th. For more information and tickets log onto www.nygasp.org or by phoning (212) 769-1000.

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg