The Gentlemen of Titipu

On paper this must have sounded like a wonderful idea! An animated tab version of Gilbert & Sullivan's best known work, THE MIKADO, cut down for a youth audience and starring Australia's clown princess, Anna Russell, who had already (in 1954) sung the Witch in a claymation version of Humperdinck's HANSEL AND GRETEL, as the Mikado's daughter-in-law intended, Katusha. How well I remember the first records I ever owned were plastic on cardboard picture discs of songs from THE MIKADO and H. M. S. PINAFORE! What could possibly go wrong? Well, start by turning the project over to Australia's version of Rankin and Bass, America's premiere poverty row animators who's supreme achievements were the Mr. Magoo cartoons, and allow them to shuffle the characters and "update" W. S. Gilbert's best known comedy lyrics with no sense of period or humor. Then reorchestrate the whole thing to sound like a bad John Denver special (not that there's *anything* wrong with a John Denver special(!), but his musical period and musical phrasing sound nothing like Sir Arthur Sullivan's!). What you are left with is essentially THE GENTLEMEN OF TITIPU; an attempt to retell the classic tale from the point of view, apparently, of the Mikado, with almost none of the original wit or musical sense. "Mia sama, mia sama..." indeed! ...and what a pity. This might have been a rare delight.