Monthly Archives: May 2018

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (NT Live)

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  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (National Theatre Live)

5/29/18 (Tues), Tokyo

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get their day again in the Old Vic’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s through-the-looking-glass take on Hamlet, broadcast as part of the great National Theatre Live series. I always thought that Beckett did the two-man existential comedy act with more punch and efficiency, but R&G is a fun ride nevertheless and with funnier lines to boot (“We’re actors – we’re the opposite of people” “[He’s] stark raving sane” “Life is a gamble with terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it” “The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily… that is what Tragedy means”). Its concept of diving into a classic through its minor characters is feeling its age, partly because of the many imitations it has spawned (Wicked, anyone?), and the part with the players is a hippie touch stuck in the 1960s, saved only by a fabulously flamboyant performance by David Haig as the lead player. But the dazzling wordplay and audaciousness of the interaction between Shakespeare’s fictional world and Stoppard’s own are as fresh as ever. Continue reading →

London (May 2018)

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London (Apr 28-May 6, 2018)

  • Witness for the Prosecution, 4/28/18 (Sat), London County Hall
  • Chess, 4/30/18 (Mon), ENO
  • The Encounter, 5/2/18 (Wed), Barbican
  • An Ideal Husband, 5/3/18 (Thurs), West End
  • The Best Man, 5/4/18 (Fri), West End
  • Mood Music, 5/5/18 (Sat), Old Vic
  • Red, 5/5/18 (Sat), West End
  • Bedroom Farces, 5/6/18 (Sun), Fringe
  • Brief Encounter, 5/6/18 (Sun), Empire Cinema

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The Inheritance

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  • The Inheritance, Part 1, 4/26/18 (Thurs), Young Vic
  • The Inheritance, Part 2, 5/1/18 (Tues), Young Vic

The Inheritance, Part 1: The first half of a seven-hour portrait of gay yuppies in the Trump era — can’t get more contemporary than that. It is reminiscent of Angels in America in its epic canvas, multiple story lines, gay Manhattan setting, AIDS-related theme, broken relationships and up-to-date politics under a conservative government (plus a lead role that would be perfect for Andrew Garfield). But it is not as angry or preachy. Whereas Angels was written and staged at a time when the gay community was still finding its voice in the face of a mysterious deadly virus and social ostracism, the situation has changed drastically in the intervening years, with gays enjoying much higher visibility and widespread acceptance. The real difference is that this generation has no collective memory of the road that others had to travel to put it there, and the theme of the show is how to remember and deal with the past in order to appreciate the present. (Angels has its own issues in how it interprets the past, but that’s another story.)

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My Not-So-Fair Lady, Part 2

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  • My Not-So-Fair Lady, Part 2, 4/25/18 (Tues)

Eliza Doolittle is now officially woke, going by the reviews of Bartlett Sher’s just opened revival of My Fair Lady. The newly conceived ending, as gleaned from spoilers (not to be revealed here), has the former flower girl breaking decisively from her mentor Higgins and going off on her own. No suggestion of romantic love or tolerance for human quirks as in the original musical. That would undoubtedly have pleased the resolutely feminist George Bernard Shaw, who insisted to the end that Eliza would never have returned to Higgins after she has become an independent woman. (In the final scene of Pygmalion, the basis for the musical, Higgins commands Eliza to go buy him a pair of gloves, at which she snaps, “Buy them yourself”, and leaves angrily.) That said, Shaw’s own actors in the original stage show and the producers of the film version, to his fury, all altered the ending without his permission to hint at a budding love affair. So any change back to Shaw’s original concept would be swimming against a long established tide.

But maybe not these days. Continue reading →

Kabuki: Money Talks (人間万事金世中)

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  • 人間万事金世中 (Money Talks)

5/13/18 (Sun), Tokyo National Theater (Zenshinza)

A rare full-length production of the 1879 Kabuki adaptation of Bulwer Lytton’s 1840 comedy Money by the prolific Kawatake Mokuami, who reset the piece in modern-day Yokohama. Between those years, Japan had undergone a momentous change from centuries of military rule to parliamentary rule (constitutional monarchy) in 1868, and the wrenching effects this had on society were ongoing as Mokuami took up his pen (or brush).

Mokuami learned of the play second-hand (I doubt he spoke English or actually read the script) and follows the broad outline, such as names reminiscent of the original, e.g. the strange Efu Rinnosuke – Efurin for short – for Evelyn. But he reworked the show seamlessly for a Japanese setting. His career spanned the Edo and Meiji Eras, and he was a sharp observer of the changes in the transformation from feudal society, where position was determined largely by birth, to a money-driven capitalist ethic. This play is a so-called zangiri (cropped hair) drama depicting characters in modern hairstyles and occasional Western dress, a performance style that never really caught on – audiences remained enamored of Edo, and the Western experiment (including the brief use of actresses) was eventually dropped. Still, this show stands as a valuable portrait of its times.

Continue reading →