I grew up on the Upper East Side in New York just a few blocks from The Eastside Playhouse, which was then, in the late 70s and early 80s, home to the Light Opera of Manhattan. My parents, who actively took me to Broadway shows courtesy of TKTS (I remember Camelot, Grease and Annie as some of the first shows I saw), also took me regularly and religiously to the Gilbert & Sullivan performances put on by LOOM. Truthfully, I was very small, and it mostly blends together, although I can be sure I saw Pirates and Pinafore, and probably most everything else they put on as well. A not so brief history of LOOM, its G&S productions as well as its annual Babes in Toyland Christmas show that we went to every single year, can be found here:
http://www.musicals101.com/loomhistory.htm -- to read about this place, and all the things I never knew about it because I was young or unaware, was something absolutely lovely just now, and I'm touched to see a web page dedicated to it.
I did not actually see the Mikado until after my own appearance in it, in fifth grade. We were given the script prior to auditions to familiarize ourselves with who we might wish to play. Being an an all-girls school, that didn't do shows with boys until 9th grade, male parts were up for grabs, but predictably, having our feminity proved and praised was at the top of everyone's agenda, and vying for Yum-yum was the order of the day.
I don't think it really occured to me that Ko-ko was male. I don't think I cared. I was ten, if that, and he just popped of the page at me, sarcastic and unpleasant, somewhat timid, certainly vain, and clearly far more entertained with himself than anyone else was. I memorized the entire script, and I prayed to God every night for that part, promising him I would never ever ask for anything else ever if I got that part.
Which I did. And believe me, I've asked God and a whole host of other beings for all sorts of things since, but that's probably another story.
It was of course slightly bizarre that I got my part based on saying the lines. Because I couldn't.. or rather didn't sing then. In fact, I wound up speak-singing the entire show, with the exception of that hideous little number about the suicidal bird. This was shameful to me then, and shameful to me now, because I love the Mikado, and I love singing, but I was so intimidated by everyone and everything and I'd been yelled at enough for getting the part -- to think that I had the right to sing as well, was too much, especially when coupled with my voice issues which I was then quite in the throes of.
Among the many bizarre people I was educated with, was the daughter of David Merrick, Broadway producer, and thanks to that particular connection, our show was professionally costumed. I recall to this day, Marguerita's mother and the people she brought in, tracing the outline of our feet for slippers. And I remember that Marguerita liked me because I said her name with its proper "t" and not with a "d" as was common and lazy. She complimented me on it more than once and remains one of the few people I think on very fondly from that time.
The performances were taped professionally, but we never acquired a tape as we did not own a VCR at the time, although I did get to watch it at my friend Elyse's house, although regrettably by entire skull was obscured by an unfortunate conspiracy between my large silver paper-mache axe and the camera angle.
To return, briefly, to the subject of LOOM -- somewhere in my parents' house are polaroids of me as a small girl posing with the person in the giant stuffed bear costume for Babes in Toyland. We always went to Benihana before Babes in Toyland, and so stuck to each of these little portfolios of deteriorating images (and you can also see the bear costume looking more and more tired with each year as well) are the small fabric flowers stickers they gave out at Benihana then and perhaps now (I don't know).
I remember that the seats of the theater were often torn, and that is smelled like plaster dust, and that my parents would get drinks at intermission and I would glare at the other children there, who didn't know they weren't supposed to behave like children. I remember being afraid to tell my parents that was what I wanted to do and that the greenstamps store was down the block.
At Hewitt, in the year that my fifth grade class performed the Mikado, the song all the girls in the show loved was of course "The Sun's Whose Rays Are All Ablaze". Our Yum-yum had a large fan that was gold on one side and silver on the other, and she turned it as she sang about the sun, and then the moon; I still remember most of her chroegraphy and blocking for that song. The rest of my class would walk through the halls singing it because it was the prettiest song and all of them wished they were singing it. I found its melody haunting, but couldn't even play at it, and so did not -- although it's the song from the Mikado that most often enters my mind unbidden.
All of this, being in one way or another why Topsy-Turvy struck at me the way it did, outside of it being an exceptional film in every way. My own associations with Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado key into the keenest senses of wonder and loss I recall having in my childhood and to see it as a map of those same feelings, in the world of adults, was very strange, and very beautiful. And while it's certainly still a stretch, I can sing that damn song now.
This is me and our Katisha. I'm the short one:
http://www.well.com/~miclan/mikado.jpg![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
