Author Archives: Sekenbanashi

The Jewish Wife (Die jüdische Frau)

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  • The Jewish Wife (Die jüdische Frau)

2/20/26 (Fri)

I learned of Brecht’s 1935 short piece in researching Crooked Cross and found a performance online. The setting is again contemporary Germany. The first 20-25 minutes of the 30-minute work constitute a monologue by a woman who is calling friends to let them know that she’ll be leaving for Amsterdam for a few weeks – she tells her bridge partner to find someone to fill in, and ensures another friend that the planned dinner next week will go on despite her absence as her husband will still be there. She calls a servant to ask if she’ll take care of the husband, an eminent scientist, while she’s away, saying this time, though, that she’ll be back in a few months. We come to realize that this is no ordinary journey. We learn that she is Jewish, and her husband is not.

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Crooked Cross

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  • Crooked Cross

2/18/26 (Wed)

A stunningly prescient UK drama from 1935, making its US debut (and its first production anywhere since 1937). The invaluable Mint Theater, which specializes in unearthing forgotten dramas, had made it available for streaming through this weekend, and I happened to read about it just in time. Having coincidentally just watched The City Without Jews from the same era, I find it pretty clear that no one could be ignorant of what was going on in Germany at the time, though there was presumably still a September 10th mentality that left the genocidal murders beyond imagination.

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Gold Diggers of 1933

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  • Gold Diggers of 1933

2/15/26 (Sun)

Mervyn LeRoy’s joyous musical celebration comes between two other Warner Bros backstage musicals the same year, 42nd Street and Footlight Parade, that pretty much define the era. The songs are performed as stage productions rather than character or narrative numbers and are essentially interchangeable, having nothing to do with the underlying story; the producers in fact switched out the final number for a new song with no effect at all on the narrative. The show is based on a stage farce from 1919 that already had two previous film treatments. This one apparently was supposed to be a drama as well but added musical numbers following the success of 42nd Street (they moved fast in those days). Its huge popularity spawned several sequels.

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The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden)

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  • The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden)

2/4/26 (Wed)

I was made aware of this startling 1924 silent film when the irreplaceable Mark Steyn featured the German novel from two years earlier in his column. The film had long been thought lost, but fragments were found in poor condition in Amsterdam in 1991, which were only shown publicly years later. Then, in one of those seemingly impossible coincidences, a full copy in excellent condition emerged at a French flea market in 2015. That was digitally restored and released three years later.

A large city – Vienna in the original, a limp “Utopia” in the film – is roiled by economic troubles and severe public discontent amid a stark divide between the decadent rich and the struggling poor. Looking for a scapegoat, politicians soon target the Jews, blaming them for all the city’s woes. The Jews are compared to a pest that must be exterminated to protect the roses. The government orders that all Jews be expelled from the city, though allowing second-generation Jews to remain if they agree to be baptized. It arranges stock cars to take them away along with all their worldly possessions, ripping them from their roots. The city is soon bereft of all Jewish life. It quickly becomes clear that its business and cultural life has been torn apart as well: the theaters are empty, fashion houses flounder, the currency plunges, businesses die. “When you expelled the Jews,” says one person, “you banished prosperity as well.”

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Blue Moon

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  • Blue Moon

1/27/26 (Tues)

Richard Linklater’s 2025 film is a credible fantasy about the great lyricist Lorenz Hart on the opening night of Oklahoma!, his long-time partner’s first venture with another lyricist – and his mixed feelings when the show, which he mocks as unsophisticated schlock, turns out to be a massive critical and popular success.

Hart’s numbers with Rodgers over the preceding quarter century were and are known for their urbane wit and intelligence and remain among the most golden songs of America’s Golden Age of Song. But in terms of musical theater, the lyrics always sound like the literate Hart, not like the characters on stage. While the team created numerous innovative musicals, the songs themselves remain New York-bound in sensibility. It was Hammerstein who took musical lyrics into the next dimension as specific expressions of character and story; his Oklahomans sound Oklahoman. His songs are integral to the story they are telling, and the story is inseparable from the songs, creating an American equivalent of opera. When Hart is watching the new show, he is viewing his own obsolescence. His reaction is complicated by his personal demons, including a midget-like stature (a miniscule 147cm or 4’10”) that complicates his desire for a romantic partner and his descent into alcoholism. The film examines him over the course of the opening night.

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Kabuki: Kumo no Ito (蜘蛛絲梓弦), Tale of Sanemori (実盛物語)

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  • Kabuki: 蜘蛛絲梓弦 (Kumo no Ito), 実盛物語 (Tale of Sanemori)

1/25/26 (Sun), Tokyo Kabukiza

Kabuki continues to boom following the unexpected success of the Kabuki-themed film Kokuho, still running at theaters after six months (it was just nominated for a minor Oscar this week). This month’s Kabuki program largely featured up-and-coming performers in prominent roles, which encouragingly drew a healthy crowd of young audiences. The first of the three shows, not listed here, was a light three-part dance piece celebrating the new year, basically an excuse to show off a large number of cast members.

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Pretty Woman (プリティ・ウーマン, musical)

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  • 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. Continue reading →

Madame de Sade (サド侯爵夫人)

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  • サド侯爵夫人 (Madame de Sade)

1/18/26 (Sun), Tokyo

Mishima Yukio’s typically talky drama has its fans: it was selected by Japanese critics back in 1994 as the nation’s best play of the postwar era. (Mishima tied as best writer with the equally prolific Inoue Hisashi of Living With Father fame.) It was written in 1965, just five years before the author’s shocking seppuku – which I mention only because director Miyamoto Amon has decided to include this irrelevant fact as the first line in this production, spoken portentously by the actor who will play the servant (after he has stood facing us on the dark stage for several minutes of utter silence). A starry West End production some years back put critics to sleep, though a Swedish rendering by Ingmar Bergman, available on YouTube, is held in some esteem.

This production had two selling points. One, the six-woman show is played by an all-male cast, a technique that Japanese directors turn to occasionally. Second, the lead, Narimiya Hiroki, is making his comeback after abruptly quitting show business several years earlier over horrific media bullying regarding his private life. (As it happens, Higashide Masahiro, who plays the horny countess, is himself coming off an adultery scandal, which somehow feels appropriate for this piece.)

The author based the work on the historical fact that the Marquise de Sade waited devotedly for 12 years for her famously demented husband to be released from prison, only to refuse to see him ever again once he was finally out. The play examines this through the lives of six women, each representing a different side of French society (wifely devotion, social status, religion, etc). Continue reading →

The Mirror (آینه Ayneh)

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  • The Mirror (آینه Ayneh)

1/9/26 (Fri)

Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s 1997 film shows the influence of his mentor Kiarostami, who penned the director’s The White Balloon just two years earlier, in the breaking of the fourth wall. A simple story about a girl whose mother fails to pick her up from school, which takes up the first 40% or so of the movie, becomes something very different when the seven-year-old actress becomes miffed for some reason and, throwing off her costume, refuses to film the final scene. As she storms off, she forgets to remove her body mike, so the director, having film to spare, orders the crew to continue following and filming her as she maneuvers Tehran’s busy streets.

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& Juliet

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  • & Juliet

12/14/25 (Sun), Broadway

This one wasn’t at the top of my to-see list during my NY visit – I had ignored it in London, where it debuted – but there weren’t many choices on a Sunday night. It was either this or Mamma Mia, another musical based on the work of Swedish songwriters, which I hadn’t seen since (gulp) 2000. I ending up going for the new piece. Big mistake.

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Plan 75 (プラン75）

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  • Plan 75

12/27/25 (Sat)

Hayakawa Chie’s 2022 work, amazingly her first feature film, is a beautiful and understated rumination on an aging society, an acute issue in Japan. The government has crafted a sweet-sounding plan offering incentives for those 75 and older to, in effect, kill themselves. Those who sign up receive a ¥100,000 cash payment (rendered oddly as $1,000 in the subtitles) and can spend their final hours wining and dining in a lovely facility, where they will then be gassed to death. Cremation and other costs are completely covered as well. While the program is nominally voluntary, the attraction is strong for lonely old people with nowhere else to turn, and there is considerable pressure to ease the burden on society by slipping peacefully away rather than dragging on unproductively for decades more.

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Scam (でっちあげ)

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  • でっちあげ (Scam)

12/12/25 (Fri)

A Miike Takashi film of 2025. An elementary school teacher is accused by a mother of abusing her son. We first witness a home visit by the teacher, who spouts racist comments about the mixed-blood kid and disparages his classroom behavior in outrageous terms. The mother is incensed and complains to the principal, who insists that the teacher apologize just to get rid of her.

Then, in imitation of Koreeda’s far superior Monster, it replays the event in question from the teacher’s perspective. Continue reading →