The Mikado of Italy

The theater community, which I was in rather hip-deep in my 20s, has always been a heavy bastion of liberalism, particularly of the "shoot yourself in the foot" school (we'll get to that). I generally kept my conservative leanings to myself, rather than try to argue with people who were my friends about something, fruitlessly. Their friendship was important to me, more so than agreement.

And so, in the spirit of "the more things change, the more they stay the same", we have the sad saga of The Mikado in San Francisco.

The Mikado is, of course, the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta most familiar to American audiences, certainly along with HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance among their 14 total collaborations. Many are familiar with songs such as "A Wand'ring Minstrel", "Three Little Maids" and "Tit-Willow" without even knowing their source.

It is, however, somehow becoming a bad thing to perform Mikado in its form as first presented in the 1880s, and preserved and done the same way for many decades by England's D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, the group which performed the operas originally and was chartered to present them as originally done through the life of the copyrights. They did so through the 1980s when the company folded.

Performing the show today, as originally done, is "bad" because the premise of the show is seen as "racist", the worst sin on planet Earth -- "yellowface" in race-speak, borrowed from the term "blackface." Now, I know, as a frequent performer of these operas back in the day, that although Mikado is ostensibly set in Japan, and the characters supposedly Japanese, the characters are actually Englishmen, and the satire of the show is meant toward pompous types Gilbert regularly encountered in the UK. The Japanese setting, names, makeup and attire are simply a diversion, reflecting the (then) new interest by the British in all things Japanese. The 19th Century audience knew what they were watching.

That sort of thing, however, in Barack Obama's America of the last eight years, had become "racism." Accordingly, the Lamplighters, a San Francisco theater group which regularly performs these works, decided before doing a production of Mikado that, even though the characters are English, dressed up and named with Japanese effect, they needed to have some Asian-American performers. And accordingly, they went straight to local Asian theater companies to get some of those performers to come audition.

That polite, thoughtful and overly-respectful approach, however, bombed entirely. As this piece notes, the Bay Area groups they tried to reach out to insisted that ALL 40 of the cast members be actual Asians. (Note that they didn't specify "how" Asian each person had to be; the retired ballplayer Johnny Damon, who is part Thai -- you didn't know? -- might have qualified for this ethnic filter -- but the groups didn't say.) All of them. Asian. A Vietnamese-American actor could play a Japanese, but not a Caucasian actor. Go figure.

Long story short, eventually, after long wrangling, the Lamplighters gave up. Oh, they're doing Mikado, all right, but it will be set in -- get this -- Italy, with the part of the Mikado now an Italian duke and a lot of libretto changes. Most importantly, the casting, which would have provided roles for lots of Asian-American performers, will now include none, unless by accident. Instead of teaming with the Lamplighters to provide authenticity and excise a possibly now-demeaning word or three, the Asian theater group became a community that simply shot itself in the foot (I said I'd get back to that).

From what I can tell, the local Italian theater community has made no demands regarding the percentage of the cast whose last names needed to end with a vowel. [Disclaimer -- I am Italian by marriage. My wife, who actually was born so, just shook her head at the story.]

Now I certainly confess to holding zero prejudices toward people of any Asian ethnicity or nationality. I don't recall ever in my adult life encountering anyone who had a demeaning thing to say about Asians or Asian-Americans, and I went to M.I.T., where over 30% of the entering classes these days are Asian.

I have seen plenty of situations where foreigners have made fun of American stereotypes and I have laughed them off. Their theatrical stereotypes of us are no worse than what we do to ourselves satirically, or else they're so off the mark (we don't all ride horses out west) as to be laughable -- or so on the mark as to be funny on their merit.

But the left these days, the professional offended class, is heck-bent on making sure that we have a right not to be offended, and to shut down any situation where we are. Presumably that is to ensure that there is yet another new part of government that can be formed to address such offenses, much like Harvard has created an Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, as if a hugely liberal bastion of academia could ever be accused of being somehow racist. But at least there are more jobs at Harvard. Yippee.

Ironically, Mikado is actually one of the few pieces where Asian performers, because of the setting, would fit right in playing non-Asians, (in this case Englishmen), rather than the whole "suspension of disbelief" thing you get when performers are cast into racial non-sequiturs. That's what makes this whole story as silly as it is. By insisting, in one of the few theater settings where it wouldn't have mattered, that all performers be Asian, the groups purporting to represent their community killed off work for many of their own.

I hope the performers feel they were well-represented, because I sure don't. It's like a union striking, and the company just closing the plant and terminating all the jobs for good. Or Apple now having to deal with the brand-new iPhone hacking tool that only exists because they wouldn't cooperate with the FBI. Oops.

And if the Lamplighters choose to do a different show next year -- say, "The Gondoliers" or "Princess Ida" -- and have even one black or Asian actor, which could be historically challenged for that operetta, I think I might write a letter of complaint to the Asian theater people suggesting they protest. If only Asians may perform Mikado in the eyes of the arts community of San Francisco, then that should apply to all theatrical performances, both ways. Goose, meet gander.

It's only fair.

Copyright 2017, 2016 by Robert Sutton