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Set in Italy, The Mikado gains humor and escapes controversy. The Lamplighters impress with high production values and a talented cast.

Martin Lloyd Evans returns to Scottish Opera direct a visually rich and lively Mikado. Richard Suart is a veteran Ko-Ko with no-one safe from his Little List as it changes for every performance.

Miller eschews the oriental side of the tale, seeing The Mikado as a play on daft British eccentricity. 

Last night’s performance of The Mikado was a historical moment for the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society (affectionately known as the “R&R”) as it celebrates its centenary this year. Its very first performance in the Queen’s Theatre, Dublin in 1913 was also Gilbert and Sullivan’s much-loved Mikado, representing a satisfying continuity with last night’s performance.

Jonathan Miller and ENO’s iconic interpretation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado has returned to the London Coliseum this Christmas, to the delight of G&S fans across the capital, including myself.

The Gilbert and Sullivan canon perhaps achieves the pinnacle of its greatness with The Mikado. The ninth of their fourteen collaborations, it was premièred at the Savoy Theatre in 1885 and the gentlemen were rewarded with an extraordinary success.

Jonathan Miller's much-loved production of The Mikado for English National Opera is now 25 years old and well remembered. But not, I confess by me. My last experience of Gilbert and Sullivan was on the other side of the curtain, as a sister, cousin or aunt in a school production of HMS Pinafore, an experience sufficiently scarring that I resolved never to go to a G&S opera again.

“Off with their heads!” I vividly recall being terrorized as a preschooler hearing Walt Disney’s sadistic, loud-mouthed Queen of Hearts thunder these signature lines. I have since learned that decapitation as capital punishment is not exclusive to the fictional Queen of Hearts of Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, but rather grim historical reality.