Men from Japan will win fans

Assuming you're not one of those emotionally wizened creatures who dislike Gilbert and Sullivan, you shouldn't need urging to visit the Savoy. The restructured D'Oyly Carte Company is in vigorous health there, its faithful and often brilliantly inventive G&S productions attracting appreciative audiences.

This time round, Ian Judge's 2000 production of The Mikado has an added draw in the presence of comedian Jasper Carrott as Ko-Ko. He has no trouble carrying a tune, but he's easily the weakest voice in the show, particularly when speaking. He underplays, albeit quite touchingly, in the midst of a cast that overplays to calculated and magnificent effect. Extraordinarily for a stand-up comic, he is tentative about engaging the audience and nailing the laughs.

Not so the always-effervescent Royce Mills, who plays Pooh-Bah with immense verve; Graham Stone is a sonorous and musical Mikado; Susannah Self's rampantly severe but paradoxically sympathetic Katisha is as good as you'll find. Joseph Shovelton brings a lissome tenor and comic finesse to Nanki-Poo, and his Yum-Yum, the bright soprano Jacqueline Varsey, catches perfectly the mixture of pertness and proto-feminist independence of mind unique to Gilbert's soubrettes.

Judge moves his (excellent) chorus around with virtuosity - - he has a genius for richly ridiculous choreography on this confined stage. Tim Goodchild's designs are fabulously imaginative, his sets and costumes fusing Victorian England and never-never Japan. Conductor John Owen Edwards gets the crispest possible playing from his musicians.

Carrott may seem misplanted here but I'm rooting for him to grow in confidence. If his presence raises the profile of this scintillating and very funny show, he's doing the company proud.

The Mikado