You know the score. That lull between Christmas and New Year when you're still stuffed with turkey and pudding, off work and looking for something to fill your time. How about a trip to London to see some shows? Great! Bat Boy, need to see that again before it closes. Les Mis of course, but that just leaves one matinee gap to fill. A quick search on the net and by accident you find out Sophia is in The Mikado in Richmond. A bit of G & S sounds OK, especially at six quid a ticket for the Thursday afternoon. "We're sold out for that performance, sorry". Damn! "No, wait a minute we have just a couple of seats upstairs". Result!

Half an hour on the tube from London, a nice pub lunch overlooking Richmond green, a walk down by the river on a mild December day, a stroll around Richmond (nice place, but too many mad BMW drivers), ignore the delights of John Inman and Basil Brush at the Richmond Theatre down the road and there we are. The Orange Tree Theatre. It has to be said that despite it's picturesque name, it isn't the prettiest theatre in the world, the near anonymous main entrance being up a flight of stairs in a side street off Richmonds main road. Once inside, there is a certain olde englishe charm that was a welcome break from the bustle of the West End. Grey haired ladies selling programmes and dispensing cups of tea, village fete style. If those last two sentences sound patronising and insulting, I can assure you they were meant in the best way possible!

The auditorium is cosy and intimate. This is, apparantly, London's only permanent theatre in the round. Downstairs has three rows of seats, with one row around the balcony upstairs. An ideal place to get close to the performers.

If you don't already know, this wasn't your traditional performance of The Mikado with flowing Japanese robes etc, but was set on a cricket field. Yes, you read that right, a cricket field.

The show began before it began with Sophia in a little cameo as the groundsman tending the wicket and looking dissaprovingly at any audience member who dared to walk across it to reach their seats and nearly trimming one little boy's toenails with her shears.

The cast for the show, as well as Sophia, featured Paul Bentall and Victoria Nalder, previously with her in Brighton Rock.

The characters shared the same names and broadly the same lines as the traditional Mikado, but the similarity stopped there. Paul Bentall played Pooh-Bah, the man with a finger in every pie, as a bumptious Yorkshire umpire, whilst Julian Forsyth's Mikado had the chairman of the committee air of a naturally superior figure born to greatness, looking up punishments in his Wisden (for non cricket fans - Wisden is the cricket "bible"). James Millard as Nanki-Poo appears first as an Aussie grunge dude!

Sophia makes her first appearance as Yum-Yum alongside Pitty-Sing and Peep-Bo (Sarah Manton and Victoria Nalder), as hockey playing schoolgirls in the shortest possible skirts, to sing the Three Little Maids from School whilst playfully teasing the male cricketers.

One of the highlights of the show was the rewriting of Ko-Ko, the executioner's list of people who wouldn't be missed. It now includes TV chefs, Robert Kilroy-Silk and people who don't turn off their mobile phones!

Which reminds me. This show is definately played to the audience, and there is a fair bit of audience participation. If you are of a shy disposition try not to sit on the front row or the aisle seats, or laugh too long and loud, or even be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even upstairs I received the nastiest, most evil stare I've ever had in my life, from Carol Noakes playing the spurned Katisha.

Sophia's transformation from short-skirted (that again - it must have made an impression on me for some reason) schoolgirl to blushing bride via some apparantly novel uses for Black & Decker power tools and blue paint is the highlight of the start of Act 2, and she even gets to try out a coffin for size. Why in every role I've seen her does Sophia's character either die or get threatened with death? But naturally it all ends happily as Yum-Yum ends up with the man of her dreams.

At close of play, you have to say that Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas are most definately not high art, but they are great, fun theatre and this production certainly lives up to that. The cast all in good voice and having lots of fun and Sophia in top form.

Would have loved to have stayed for the after show discussion, but having to get back into London for Les Mis that evening, it just wasn't possible.

Recommended.

Afterthought:-

Hmmm. I only discovered this show by accident on the net didn't I? If only there was some central resource for Sophia Ragavelas fans to keep in touch with her career and projects. Ah well, maybe somebody will set up a website for her one day.

Iain

Copyright Iain Sykes 2005

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