Mikado cast dressed to thrill

By BERNADETTE RAE

A froth of peachy pastels, bold, gold-appliqued dragons, elaborately embroidered sashes, ebony top-knots and eloquently fluttering fans make the costumes for the visiting Royal Carl Rosa Opera Company's The Mikado such that the singing, at least for wardrobe mistress Katie Butterworth, is a mere bonus.

Butterworth has tended these oriental dressings since January, during the company's spring tour around the UK, and now through Australia and New Zealand. And while she knew little about the music of Gilbert and Sullivan previously, she has become a fully fledged fan.

But it is the costumes that remain her primary interest, filling three giant skips and three travelling wardrobes - and providing her with four huge loads of laundry after every show.

And still she waxes lyrical on the subject of Yum-Yum's apricot embroidery, her pale pink wedding gown embellished with white and silver thread and the second, antique over-gown. She sighs in describing Ko-Ko's costume with its appliques of antique dragons, worn with a hand-painted jacket of plum velvet ... and Pish-Tush's silvery, grey brocade with starched, stand-up collar. "And the Mikado himself wears a black brocade kimono with a velvet jacket adorned with hand-painted gold."

The costumes are all careful replicas of those worn in Gilbert and Sullivan's original Savoy production of The Mikado in 1885.

Costumes have always been one of the most important features of The Mikado. In the last decades of the 19th century Japan presented an exotic stimulus to fashion, a fact which did not escape W.S. Gilbert's notice.

Communication between the two countries was only just beginning. Following the gift of a warship from Queen Victoria to the Emperor, in 1857, a small company of Japanese had set up home in Knightsbridge, for the purpose of studying Western civilisation. They came to be as much the observed as the observers.

The talents of two members of this small settlement, a Japanese male dancer and a tea-girl, were employed by the Savoy management during the rehearsal of the first Mikado, to provide coaching in things Japanese - how to walk, run or dance in tiny steps with toes turned in, for example, and how to spread and snap a fan in wrath, delight or homage and how to giggle behind it, were important topics of discovery.

London atelier Messrs Liberty and Co stocked a fine selection of Japanese fabric and most of the raw materials for the costumes, designed by "Wilhelm", a pseudonym for John William Pritcher, came from Liberty's, who also sold antique embroideries and genuine kimonos.

None of the women's costumes from the original production have survived, although the Royal Carl Rosa Company owns the original worn by the Mikado.

"It is a kimono, a jacket and hat," says Butterworth, "but it is in a very delicate condition."

The original costumes were supplemented, in later years, by additions made by B.J. Simmons Costumiers, an esteemed costume house established in 1830, and used in all D'Oyly Carte productions until 1926, when the now famous Charles Rickets costumes were introduced.

The original Wilhelm costumes were offered, after that date, as part of Simmons' hire stock, and paraded in amateur productions up and down the land.

In 1941 Charles Fox Wigmakers bought B.J. Simmons. Between 1978 and 1979 they sold the whole Mikado collection, holus-bolus, on the open market, to a public unaware of the garments' historical significance.

But costume-makers for the 1953 film The Gilbert and Sullivan Story had been able to access many of the old models from Simmons' archives and remake some of the silk originals that had deteriorated.

When last year's Oscar-winning film Topsy-Turvy, which focuses on The Mikado, was made by Mike Leigh, research unearthed a wealth of further information. There were photographs and etchings of the original production and Liberty's catalogues of the day described the fabrics bought for the various costumes, in intimate detail.

Peter Mulloy, now directing the Carl Rosa Opera, first became involved with Mikado costumes by accident when he sorted through an ancient collection - that had often been used to sop up flood water - in the Little Theatre in his home town, Middlesbrough. He was later hired, on the strength of that experience, as a costume and set consultant on the Topsy-Turvy project, and negotiated ownership of the sets and costumes when shooting finished, as his fee.

"We are still using a couple of the costumes from the 1953 film," says Butterworth.

But for the most part the costumes in her care are made from modern fabrics, hand painted and embroidered to reproduce the effect of the originals. Antique fabrics have been used as panels or in appliques, to add authenticity. And Yum Yum's obi (sash) was sent to Japan for special embroidery work to be done.

Butterworth made a lot of the undergarments herself. And it is these items that form the bulk of her laundering duties. The washing machines and dryers start humming immediately after the show, and sometimes they are still going as the next performance begins.

With a company of 39, many of whom have more than one costume, and with each costume consisting of several pieces, the logistics of a wardrobe mistress are complex, she says.

"Not to mention starching all those stand-up collars ... "

* The Mikado plays at the Civic Theatre, Auckland, from Wednesday, August 1.