Once more the Nipponese come trooping out of Titipu; the Land of the Rising Sun goes Topsy-Turvy, and Victorian England "trips in Liberty silks." It is a show done to the Mikado's taste, with all the pace and spirit that one could wish.

First of all, there is a capable chorus, the "gentlemen of Japan," forthright in song, mincing in pantomime, hair-trigger with the fan. Then there are three most excellent characterizations: the Lord High Executioner, the Lord High Everything Else, and the Mikado. Mr. William Danforth, as the Mikado, is a player most perfectly in the Gilbertian tradition. His devastating Oriental grin stretches permanently from ear to ear; he rocks with noiseless merriment as Ko-Ko tells of the deadly snickersnee; he recites the list of hand-tailored punishments aimiably through his teeth, till suddenly his blood-curdling laugh, like Mephistopheles, rips up and down the baritone scale. He is so like a scoundrel, and so like a benevolent bishop at a christening, that Gilbert could not but approve.

Mr. Frank Moulan, as the Executioner, is even cleverer, if less Gilbertian. A wizened-eyed little wisp of a man, he capers about constantly, kicking up such a breeze with his furious fanning that he all but blows himself into the wings. He takes frequent encores by singing the most irreverent variations on the text, translating "The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, Tra-La" into every dialect but the Scandinavian. He expands the patter-song "I've Got a Little List" to include the more recent nuisances. Even in Gilbert's day this song was progressively altered to include the passing parade of follies, such as the "scorching bicyclist" and the "lovely suffragist; so that for his inclusion of the "megaphonic crooner" and the "prohibitionist," Mr. Moulan may claim traditional carte-blanche--indeed, D'Oyly-Carte--blanche.