The Mikado is tosh - a Japanese never-never land mapped by two crusty Victorians - but inspired tosh. Treat it as pantomime, as Ian Judge has in his new production for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and the souffle collapses. It might be possible to play Madam Butterfly for laughs, but The Mikado is so ridiculous that it has to be played straight.
Judge's chorus of Japanese men are all middle-aged chaps with whiskers and bowlers - the spit of Gilbert, in fact. His young ladies look like they are attending a finishing school, possibly St Trinian's. Yum-Yum, who has a grating cockney accent, seems to have strayed in from a production of My Fair Lady.
The point appears to be that Gilbert and Sullivan never intended The Mikado to be even remotely Japanese. Tea is sedately taken in an English garden; Pooh-Bah clutches a red Budget box; the Mikado arrives wearing the union flag. The cast are playing Victorians performing The Mikado: young girls flaunting their white bodices (some comment here on Victorian sexual mores?), the wily girl from the east (Stepney, east London, that is), the expert patter merchants playing Ko-Ko and Pooh-Bah. No doubt this mirrors the balance of power back in 1885, when The Mikado opened at the Savoy, but so what?
The interplay between Victorian life and imperial Japanese fantasy worked in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, but not here. It creates an extra layer under which the lunacy of the plot is unable to breathe. Once you have been reminded that it is all artifice, you start asking fatal questions such as why am I here and when do the pubs shut?
Most of what little satisfaction there is to be had comes from Richard Suart's perfectly judged Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner who can't bear the sight of blood. His little list, updated to include references to the fuel crisis, GM foods and silver mini-scooters, is very funny. Deborah Hawksley turns Katisha, Nanki-Poo's dreadful betrothed, into a drama queen and cleverly sings as if she's performing Verdi. Malcolm Rivers's star turn as the Mikado fell rather flat: he was not helped by the fact that his moustache was coming loose.
The Mikado was Gilbert and Sullivan's greatest success and it should be indestructible. It isn't.
Until January 13. Box office: 020-7836 8888.
