• Pretty Woman (プリティ・ウーマン, musical)

1/23/26 (Fri), Tokyo

A Japanese-language version of the flop Broadway musical. This production appears meant as a showcase for the half-Spanish hunk Shirota Yu, who also translated the book and lyrics. The other main roles were double-cast despite an effective run of less than two weeks.

It was no better or worse than feared, basically a paint-by-numbers recreation of the movie with songs thrown on top, as with most of these film retreads. It uses Jerry Mitchell’s Broadway production, which is at least lively. It hardly needed a book writer; if you’ve seen the film, you’ve seen the musical. The songs (by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance) were tuneful at times and harmless overall. We were happily spared the lyrics, which were of course rendered in Japanese.

Projections were used liberally throughout. At one point, a character walked between screens that were showing a panoramic view of LA, as if he disappeared into the ether – bad staging. The scene at the opera featured a bland and unnecessary ballad by the Richard Gere character, which stated feelings that should have been obvious, but did mix that creatively with the snippets from La Traviata. I was surprised to hear the Roy Orbison song at the show’s end given how much the rights must have cost. The creators did themselves no favor by including it, as it was far superior to anything that came before.

No one in the cast stood out. Shirota gets by on his good looks and solid voice but adds nothing special to the bland role. Still, he was physically right and got the job done. I wasn’t familiar with any of the other performers and couldn’t really tell them apart from our faraway seats. The spunky women, including the lead, projected more energy than character. The dance numbers were largely mechanical.

I didn’t see any reason for this show going in, and I felt the same going out. Not recommended.