In addition to “missed,” there are the additional past tenses of “kiss” and “hiss,” while we moderns can also avail ourselves of “diss” and “piss.” Then there are the “ist” nouns like “fist,” “gist,” “grist,” and “mist,” not to mention “cyst,” which probably doesn’t get used too often, along with the “ist” verbs like “insist” and “resist,” not to mention “wist”—back in the nineteenth century you could get away with “I wist” to fill out a short line a lot more easily than you can today. Beyond that are all the long “ist” nouns—like “philanthropist,” “misogynist,” etc., so useful in patter songs.
The point of all this being, I would much rather listen to obscure, maybe funny to somebody somewhere versions of “They’d None of Them Be Missed” than write about House Speaker Boehner and his merry band of constitutional cutthroats.
Operaaustralia rocks The Mikado, with Mitchell Butel (“of Avenue Q fame,” or so I’m told) filling us in on who’s expendable Down Under.
The Juneau Mikado, unfortunately not as well miked as one would like, engages in some Palin-impaling, and appropriately so.
The Savoy Company, which started the whole G&S thing, delivers, appropriately enough, a largely “Get Off My Lawn” take.
