THEATER REVIEW : Duarte Enters New Stage With Ambitious ‘Mikado’

Theatrically speaking, Monrovia’s loss is Duarte’s gain.

When artistic directors Mary and Norman Bowman were compelled to fold their Monrovia Center Theatre late last year, they regrouped, headed east and struck a deal with the neighboring city of Duarte to open that community’s first legitimate theater.

The result is the 120-seat Duarte Center Theatre, which makes an ambitious and auspicious debut with Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado,” the legendary operetta often regarded as the best comic opera ever written in English.

Director-choreographer Tom Robinson retains the old Japanese look (the medieval Japan found on historic vases, jars and fans). That means, for traditionalists out there, that the production looks and sounds as it probably did when it opened in New York in 1885.

Sullivan’s melodies, alternately delicate and lively, don’t have a full-blown orchestra behind them (as in D’Oryly Carte’s famous productions), but they do enjoy the strong piano accompaniment of Nancy Ramos.

And the on-stage chorus, madrigals, duets and solo vocal turns are often lustrous--ranging from the lightness and humor of “Willow, Tit-Willow” and “There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast,” to the charming and fragile “A Wand’ring Minstrel” and “Three Little Maids from School Are We.”

The aforementioned “minstrel,” now updated to a sax player, is conveyed with amiable intensity by Michael Wesley as the young, love-smitten protagonist Nanki-Poo, the emperor’s runaway son who promises to give up his life in return for one month’s marital bliss with his demure flower of a bride, Yum-Yum (Sheryl Kramer).

The courtly setting, the vivid silken kimonos and the show’s formal, cadenced style may look Japanese, but the jokes and satire are actually British targets. Londoners Gilbert and Sullivan were poking fun at the Victorians, not old Japan.

While the acoustics and singing fill the air with sharp clarity (notably in the case of bulky Thomas D. Bruner as a second-string lord called Pooh-Bah), it is equally true that not all the lyrics are comprehensible (as in the blurred solos by the garishly face-painted Rose Maling as the jilted fiancee Katisha).

In short and in fact, theatergoers should arrive early enough to scan the insert in the theater program entitled “The Argument,” in which the topsy-turvy plot is clearly laid out. Once read, you can sit back and let the spirit and color of the show wash over you without worrying about catching all the lyrics.

A mirthful, bumptious Gabriel Bastian turns Ko-Ko, the reluctant Lord High Executioner who desires to marry Yum-Yum himself, into a nervous wreck upon the arrival of Fred Derbyshire’s blustery, snowy-haired emperor (The Mikado).

And the pitter-patter of the tittering maids is nicely rendered by Melinda Bridges’ Pitti-Sing and Jan Harle’s Peep-Bo. (No wonder the public fell in love with this show--the names alone are delicious).

It was a gamble opening the new theater with an operetta, a style that requires familiarity with sung dialogue. Any one of the theater’s upcoming shows--”A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Man of La Mancha” and “The Fantasticks”--would have been a safer choice. But the roll of the dice, thanks to a polished production, paid off.

The completely renovated facility, formerly a grocery warehouse, features two separate theaters and 12,000 square feet of space.

Plans include not only plays and musicals, but four workshops (in Shakespeare, dance, playwriting, and lighting and set designing). The second theater, a cabaret stage, has scheduled magicians from Hollywood’s Magic Castle and a Latino comedy troupe, the Java Junques.

Culturally, sleepy Duarte has gotten a wake-up call.

* “The Mikado,” Duarte Center Theatre, 2160 E. Huntin g ton Drive, Duarte, 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Ends June 20. $10. Information: (818) 303-9521. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.