Category Archives: Musical

Ivo van Hove’s (!) West Side Story

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  • Ivo van Hove’s (!) West Side Story

7/13/18 (Fri)

Something’s coming indeed. Hot on the heels of the unlikely news that Hollywood giant Steven Spielberg is taking on his first musical with a film remake of West Side Story, it’s been announced that the eclectic stage director Ivo van Hove is taking on his first Broadway musical with a stage production of that very same West Side Story. Odd that these are coming essentially at the same time, especially as the approaches of the populist filmmaker and decidedly non-populist stage director are likely to be vastly different.

Most notably, a press release on July 12 by veteran producer Scott Rudin says that the new stage version will not feature the classic finger-snapping dances by Jerome Robbins, who (in Robbins’ own modest words) “conceived, directed and choreographed” the original production, but use new work by contemporary dance choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Scenery and lighting design will be handled by van Hove’s regular collaborator and life partner Jan Versweyveld, making for an all-Belgian creative team. Based on the director’s previous shows, we can expect a bare stage and lots of bare feet.

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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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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 →

Mary Poppins comes to Tokyo (メリーポピンズ)

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  • メリー・ポピンズ: Mary Poppins comes to Tokyo

More than a dozen years after its debut in London, the stage production of Mary Poppins is finally making its way to Tokyo in an all-Japanese version this month. The show ran only around three years in London, a considerable disappointment given the potency of the title and the pedigree of mega-producers Disney and Cameron Mackintosh. It posted a stronger and profitable run of over six years on Broadway, but never became the iconic hit that many had envisioned.

My review of the London production from September 2005, when the show was still in its first year, says it all, so I’ll repeat that here.

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My Not-So-Fair Lady: Those dangerous old musicals

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  • My Not-So-Fair Lady: Those dangerous old musicals

The New York Times has decided that old musicals are a danger to society. A recent article, “The Problem With Broadway Revivals: They Revive Gender Stereotypes, Too”, complains that revivals of Carousel, My Fair Lady and Kiss Me, Kate present women as inferior beings who endure abuse from their male counterparts: “Billy Bigelow hits Julie Jordan. Henry Higgins molds Eliza Doolittle. Fred tames Lilli.” It claims unsurprisingly that these revivals are a “huge conversation” among the #MeToo movement. (It also discusses Pretty Woman, a new musical based on the film that is scheduled to open this year.) The article quotes worried musician Georgia Stitt as saying, “In 2017 is the correct message really ‘women are there to be rescued’?”

Well, no. That’s not the message at all, and the problem isn’t the musicals but the shriveled viewpoint of those perpetual victims who turn everything they touch into proof of their own suffering. Stacy Wolf, an academic (naturally) who has written a feminist history of Broadway, calls the characters in such musicals “pathetic”, and Stitt asks rhetorically, “Are these the shows I’m going to take my 12-year-old daughter to?”

Depends on how you look it, doesn’t it? Continue reading →

Takarazuka: South Pacific (宝塚: 南太平洋 )

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  • 宝塚: 南太平洋 (Takarazuka: South Pacific)

4/10/13 (Wed), Tokyo

At first glance, South Pacific seemed the least likely of the big Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals to be given the Takarazuka treatment given the high macho factor: “There’s Nothing Like a Dame” has a whole chorus of men grumbling about the lack of women, “Younger Than Springtime” calls in the script for a shirtless guy (implying some off-stage fun), and “Honey Bun” features a man in drag with coconuts for boobs. Also, the theme of racial discrimination wouldn’t resonate whatsoever with this group’s core audience. More than that, the text states explicitly that the soldiers are there to fight the Japanese, which no one in this country wants to hear about. (In the last version I saw in Tokyo, an import from London, the subtitles used katakana, the alphabet used for foreign words, for all references to the Japanese military (ニホン軍) as if Japan were a foreign country.) But, of course, it’s a big romantic story with two juicy male leading roles, an ideal combination for these guys (girls), and the super-maleness was certainly a prime attraction for me. There was no way I was going to miss this opportunity to catch some high camp.

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Spielberg’s (!) West Side Story

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  • Spielberg’s (!) West Side Story 

Steven Spielberg’s intended film remake of West Side Story is apparently a go, for better or worse. While the original 1957 stage show was a modest success, it was the smash 1961 film that put the musical on the map with the second-highest grosses of the year and ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The love was not shared by its creators, who did not approve of the numerous revisions in song order and such, and it has not aged particularly well, coming off today as rather stagy despite its on-location shooting. Still, it is an historic work with a perfect cast, that amazing score and the iconic Jerome Robbins choreography, making the challenge of a remake formidable. The innovative approaches of recent musical films like Sweeney Todd and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (as well as the NBC Live musicals) do suggest a new path for musical film, and a creative look at old material is always welcome. (The stage show itself could stand some polishing if the Robbins estate would ever allow it.)

So why am I skeptical? Let us count the ways.  Continue reading →

コメディ・トゥナイト (A Funny Thing…Forum)

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  • コメディ・トゥナイト (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum)

3/7/17 (Tues), Tokyo

Amon Miyamoto, who brought his maverick (and Tony-nominated) production of Pacific Overtures to Broadway some years back, is the go-to director for Sondheim musicals in Japan, but I was still surprised to hear that he was tackling this pure farce versus the more pseudo-serious shows that he prefers. It made more sense once I realized that he’s given it a twist: he’s changed the setting from ancient Rome to Edo, the name for present-day Tokyo through the mid-19th century. This is the first time I know of that Sondheim has permitted a fundamental change like this in any of his shows throughout his long career. (I understand that he’s also given the okay for a Company in the UK using a female lead.) Maybe he’s getting more mellow in his old age. I had assumed that this was one of Miyamoto’s wacky ideas but was surprised to learn that it came from Sondheim himself (a friend of Miyamoto’s since happening upon Pacific in Tokyo in 2000) at the suggestion of Japanese writer Aoshika Koji, who translated the script alongside Miyamoto’s lyrics.

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メンフィス (Memphis)

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  • メンフィス (Memphis)

12/12/17 (Mon), 新国立劇場

An original Japanese production of the hit Broadway musical from some years back. A white music lover in Memphis in the 1950s overcomes prejudice by persuading (1) a white record store to play black music in the shops, (2) a white radio station to play black music on the air, (3) a black singer to become his girlfriend, (4) his suspicious mother and the girl’s suspicious brother to accept his relationship with the girl, and so on and so forth. He fails to convince TV executives to accept mixed-race shows and ultimately loses the girl to reality, ending his days as DJ at a second-rate Memphis radio station while she goes on to New York and stardom. But never fear: it all comes to an upbeat ending that sends everyone out dancing. The maudlin plot was impeccably PC and nothing new, even for Japanese audiences, but it offers a harmless framework for some energetic singing and dancing against a nice pastiche of 1950s R&B.

The impressive physical production, directed and choreographed here by Jeffrey Page, was on a Broadway scale in every way. Continue reading →

Hamilton

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  • Hamilton

11/29/17 (Wed), LA Pantages

I hadn’t felt overly compelled to see Hamilton because of the insane pricing and the rap or hip-hop music (I’m not sure I know the difference). Still, it’s gone beyond musical to bona fide cultural phenomenon and a mega-hit on a scale I’ve never seen. As with Avatar way back when, I was curious to catch it at some point just to see what the fuss was about. I was happy when a friend said she managed to get a ticket when I visited LA, but was shocked when I learned that she had paid through the nose and only got one ticket. I wouldn’t have let her do that if I had known, not wanting to leave her behind or give that kind of money to greedy producers. But it was done, and I accepted her generosity. It turned out that four tickets were available at the box office at normal prices just before the show, but I thought it better not to mention that to my friend.

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New York (November 2017)

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  • Junk, 11/16/17 (Thurs), Lincoln Center
  • Torch Song, 11/17/17 (Fri), Broadway
  • Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, 11/18/17 (Sat), off Broadway
  • Time and the Conways, 11/18/17 (Sat), Broadway
  • The Band’s Visit, 11/19/17 (Sun), Broadway
  • Brigadoon, 11/19/17 (Sun), Encores!

A brief visit to New York on the way elsewhere. Shows I missed this time included Dear Evan Hansen (tickets impossible to get in the lead actor’s final days) as well as Hamilton and Bruce Springsteen (tried half-heartedly and unsuccessfully for the lottery for both). I decided against the revival of M Butterfly, one of my favorite shows, when I heard that the author had added a part describing how the Chinese guy disguised his “package”, which sounded much too literal for a show about illusion. (And I didn’t need another apparent reference by Hwang to small Asian penises, an obsession he needs to overcome.)   Continue reading →

A Look Back: La Cage Aux Folles (musical)

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  • A Look Back: La Cage Aux Folles (musical)

Another Japanese revival of the popular La Cage Aux Folles is opening soon, so I figured it was a good time to rerun my modest rewrite. The musical is great fun, but I’ve always been bothered by its preachiness. It shakes a virtual finger to tell us (rather than subtly lead us) to love gays and hate bigots and so forth. As I noted, that “is partly a function of the changing times, a trend that the musical itself helped bring about”. But it’s looking more like a period piece than the pure farce intended in the French film (I haven’t seen the original French play). The French are clearly much more relaxed about sexual matters like this – the film dates from the 1970s, when openly gay-themed shows in English were pretty rare – and their approach was more cunning in underlining the couple’s basic humanity.

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