Gilbert & Sullivan Warmed Up

In Chicago last season the Federal Theatre Project launched the big moneymaker of its brief career with a rousing, all-Negro Swing Mikado. In Chicago last week an all-Negro cast kicked over another Gilbert & Sullivan lantern, hoping to start another blaze of swing with a Tropical Pinafore. But the show went over on its rich, husky Negro singing rather than as a shagging Harlemquinade.

Following Gilbert's script to the letter, but stirring ketchup into Sullivan's score, Tropical Pinafore shifted base from foggy England to a banana-bright Caribbean isle. Opening with a jungle chant that Sullivan neglected to write, it burst into syncopation when a huge, black, big-bosomed Little Buttercup appeared, calling Dick Deadeye picklepuss and shaking her gargantuan hips.

The show's one really hot number came when the entire cast went to town with He Is an Englishman, first treating the tune straight, then sweetening it in waltz-time, finally letting fly with a full blast of boogie-woogie while the dancers stomped, slid, slithered.

Otherwise Tropical Pinafore had little of the genuine high spirits that lifted The Swing Mikado high off its feet. But it had singing that not only The Swing Mikado, but even the D'Oyly Carters, might envy.

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