Liolà
10/27/13 (Sun), London, National Theatre
Liolà, a rather obscure Pirandello play, seemed an odd choice for the National Theatre. But if nothing else, it was being directed by Richard Eyre, soon to retire as the National’s artistic director after a spectacularly successful term. That seemed good enough reason to catch it. Continue reading
赤線地帯 (Street of Shame)
9/16/13 (Thurs), Tokyo
Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1956 film about five prostitutes working at a brothel (the ironically named “Dreamland”) in Yoshiwara, Tokyo’s old red-light district, and struggling to survive amid the changing mores of the post-war era. The government is moving to outlaw prostitution with the laudable aim of protecting women (and to answer public opinion), but the move would in fact destroy not only the livelihood of these women but, in Mizoguchi’s world, the only way that women can make it on their own in society. Continue reading
Kabuki: 不知火検校, 馬盗人 (Shiranui Kengyo, The Horse Thief)
9/6/13 (Fri), Tokyo
Shiranui Kengyo is a rare showing of a modern piece dating from 1960 that is known mainly as the inspiration for the wildly successful “Zatoichi” movie series. Continue reading
NBC has announced that its live holiday musical for 2017 will be the golden oldie Bye Bye Birdie starring Jennifer Lopez. I was surprised to see the announcement before the airing of this year’s event, Hairspray, in December, but I don’t blame them for wanting to get the word out. It’s a terrific choice — an upbeat family musical with a familiar title, a great score (including several standards), a good range of wacky characters, an Elvis spoof and a nostalgic portrait of uncomplicated life in small-town America. It is set roughly in the same period as Grease and Hairspray, the two live musicals that immediately preceded it (albeit on different networks) — the late 50s and early 60s are a hot time these days, I guess, not to mention high school life. The show was apparently proposed by Lopez herself, evidently a fan of the (rather altered) movie. Hooray for her. Continue reading
リットルマーメード (The Little Mermaid) (stage)
8/24/13 (Sat), Gekidan Shiki, Tokyo
This show had stumbled badly on Broadway some five years ago, blamed widely on a bizarre and overblown production by a European operatic director. (Videos of some of the numbers suggest that the critics were right.) Shiki has picked up another version that has been reconceived by an American designer, which has reportedly been well received in Europe. I didn’t see the original stage version and didn’t have any real interest in the new production, but when a friend offered the impossible-to-get cheap seats in the last two rows, it seemed worth a look. Continue reading
10/26/16 (Wed)
Emma Rice is being shown the door as artistic director of London’s Globe Theatre after less than a year in charge. She will step down in 2018. The board felt that her extensive use of lightning and sound technology violated the spirit of the Globe, which was established to present plays in conditions similar to those under which Shakespeare worked.
I loved Rice’s previous work with the innovative Kneehigh group, and thought that the spare style she perfected in those shows would translate well to the Globe. Sadly, I have to admit that I was wrong and agree with the critics that she didn’t seem to have a clue what the Globe was all about. Continue reading
宝塚 BOYS (Takarazuka Boys)
8/7/13 (Wed), Tokyo
A dramatization of Hankyu Corporation’s efforts to create a male counterpart to its all-girl Takarazuka troupe after the war. Given the experiment’s failure and the setting amid the ashes of a defeated Japan, I assumed the play would be a standard weepie. But a friend invited me, and I figured it may at least have some camp value.
It was pretty much as feared. Continue reading
Three Idiots
8/4/2013 (Sun), Tokyo
The comedy Three Idiots (2009) is apparently India’s biggest grossing film ever, which in itself piqued my curiosity. It’s unusually long for a comedy at 170 min, but its run in Japan has been exceptionally long for an Indian movie, suggesting that it has been well received, and was coming to an end. So without knowing anything more, I figured I’d go for it. Continue reading
Saturday Night Fever
7/31/13 (Wed)
I had tried to download Saturday Night Fever on iTunes on a whim while I was on an island in Thailand, but it was so painfully slow – it was set to take nearly three days at that speed – that I gave up. I finished the job back in Tokyo, which took about two minutes. I hadn’t seen the film since its debut in 1977 and wondered if it would live up to my misty water-colored memories.
Happily it did, and then some. Continue reading
Lincoln (film)
5/18/13 (Sat), Tokyo
I didn’t have high expectations for this film given the political sensibilities surrounding blacks and slavery along with Spielberg’s sappy PC tendencies. Still, while those fears were realized within about three minutes of the opening, the film as a whole proved enlightening and entertaining at the same time. Continue reading
Kinky Boots
4/28/13 (Sun), Broadway
I had been wary of this show given the preachy tendencies of its author Harvey Fierstein and the predictable arc of the story, which, without even knowing the movie, I could smell a mile away (boy meets drag queen, boy loses drag queen, boy learns to admire drag queens). But Fierstein is always good for a joke or two, and I was curious about the Cyndi Lauper (!) score. And having snagged a standing room seat at $27, the price was right. Continue reading
I’m a big Bob Dylan fan – I still have my LP and cassette versions of Blood on the Tracks among others, and that was the first CD I ever bought when the technology came out here in Japan – but a Nobel Prize in Literature? Since when is music literature? Unlike non-laureates Keats or Wordsworth, say, Dylan’s lyrics are written to be heard, not seen. These are not poems but lyrics, and that’s not a criticism. You can’t recognize one without the other. I thought the lesson was learned with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1932, which was presented to Of Thee I Sing lyricist Ira Gershwin and the show’s book writers while pointedly leaving out composer George Gershwin. (The Pulitzer people have corrected their ways since.) Those lyrics were not written in a vacuum; they’re inseparable from the music that accompanies them. It’s the same with Dylan, who of course writes both together. A Peace Prize would have made more sense – or maybe Chemistry in honor of the reaction that occurs when music and lyrics gel into one perfect whole. Dylan is amply deserving of something, maybe a new Nobel Prize for Culture. But let’s not put him on the level of Faulkner, any more than we should give Faulkner a prize for lyrics. Continue reading
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