New Play in Manhattan

The Hot Mikado (some of it by Gilbert & Sullivan; produced by Michael Todd) does not, like the Federal Theatre's Swing Mikado (TIME, March 13), tacitly beg Gilbert & Sullivan's pardon for cutting up. Instead it impatiently regards them as two aged gentlemen whose wheel chairs need a good strong push. Once pushed, the wheel chairs go bounding lickety-split. Before the ride is half over, Gilbert falls out and breaks his neck. But Sullivan lands bruised and breathless in Harlem, in time to inquire--when the band plays his Oh, Living I--"Just what is that odd bit of music called?"

An all-Negro show like its Federal Theatre rival, The Hot Mikado kisses the Old Boys good-by at about the eighth bar of the first song, turns Titipu into a dance hall before latecomers are in their seats, makes Yum-Yum, Pitti-Sing and Peep-Bo carry on like three little maids from reform school, and finishes Act I in an uproar when Katisha busts in, no hatchet-faced termagant, but an eye-rolling, hip-shaking, torch-singing Red Hot Mama.

Blazing with gorgeous costumes, Act II fanfares a diamond-hatted, golden-suited, golden-shod Bill Robinson into view as Harlemperor of Japan. On a pair of Sullivan heels stutter-toed Mr. Robinson thereupon steps into character to show that at 60 he is still the noblest tap dancer of them all. After that The Hot Mikado is 98DEG in the shade--and no shade--till the curtain falls.

A stunt is never so startling the second time, and The Hot Mikado, though much more audacious than the Federal Theatre version, suffers from tagging at its heels. Further, when the Swing Mikado is willing to let itself go, it becomes a gayer and more abandoned romp. But simply as a show, The Hot Mikado wins hands down. It is gaudy, glittering, foot-wise, fast. It spurns Gilbert & Sullivan's Savoy operas for Harlem's Savoy ballroom. It is less profitably compared with the Swing Mikado than with such spirited colored shows as Blackbirds of 1928, Shuffle Along.

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