Forbear! Theatre Will Present THE MIKADO This Spring

The Mikado, written by Gilbert & Sullivan, will be presented by Forbear! Theatre. Performances will run May 20-24, 2025, at The Drayton Arms Theatre, 153 Old Brompton Rd, London SW5 0LJ.

In this comic operetta, the wandering minstrel Æthel-Rún finds himself agreeing to die at the hands of the Lord High executioner, in exchange for one month of marriage to Mna-y'um, the love of his life. However, when Æthel-Rún reveals his secret past to his new companions, there begins a desperate and hilarious battle to save themselves from being boiled alive.

Minimal changes have been made to the text in bringing this fantasy kingdom to life, with the same madcap characters, plot and iconic songs that have been loved for generations. The characters have been renamed using a combination of Old Norse, Old English and Gaelic, retaining the poetry and the rhyming/rhythmic structure, and each of the names contains clues about their character. This version of The Mikado aims to represent Gilbert's original intention by being set in an other-worldly, beautiful and mysterious fictional culture; the perfect canvas onto which to paint British flaws.

When writing The Mikado, Gilbert chose Japan as an 'exotic' setting; one that his British Victorian audience would find novel and mysterious. However, to a 2025 audience, the setting of Japan does not read in the same way. Many recent productions have been set in an updated environment, mostly removing any potential racism, but also losing the believability that the characters are in danger of death. Danger is at the core of The Mikado; the humour is so intertwined with the desperation of the characters trying to save their own lives. In the Fantasy-genre worlds of stories such as Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, anyone would believe that these characters could be executed at the drop of a hat. Such fictional worlds are as 'other-worldly' to us in 2025 as Japan would have appeared to a London audience in 1885.