I learned after watching Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s wild and starry movie version of Tennessee Williams’ one-act play, filmed only a year after its off Broadway debut, that the stage show itself was presented more or less unchanged on the BBC many years later. That comparison was too tempting to pass up.
Having seen the stage versions of these shows in the past days, I was eager to catch the films. The Japanese titles, literally Living With Mother and Living With Father, make the connection clearer; they are set respectively in Nagasaki and Hiroshima just after the war and are considered part of a trilogy alongside Okinawa-based Army on a Tree.
Yamada Yoji’s 2015 Nagasaki actually preceded the stage show and I suppose is considered the original. However, it takes the material in a direction that veers significantly from Inoue’s vision as seen in the other two parts of the trilogy. Continue reading
Set respectively in Nagasaki and Okinawa, these are the final two dramas in what is considered Inoue Hisashi’s trilogy of post-war life along with Hiroshima-based Living With Father (aka The Face of Jizo), which I saw on stage last week. Today’s shows are archive films of the stage productions, shown as a special tribute on the 80th anniversary of the war’s end. The description “trilogy” is deceptive: while Inoue did plan the shows, his hugely popular Father of 1994, which became his signature piece, was the only one he actually wrote. The other two were picked up after his death based on his notes. Continue reading
7/16/25 (Wed)
The classic piece by the prolific Inoue Hisashi about a woman in post-war Hiroshima with a bad case of survivor’s guilt who is visited by the ghost of her father. The immensely popular show, known in English as The Face of Jizo or more literally (and better) as Living With Father, has been revived at least 17 times in Japan in addition to numerous foreign-language productions (including a Japanese reading this month in NY) since its premiere in 1994 by Komatsu-za. That was directed as today by Uyama Hitoshi, so I assume this more or less follows the original staging. It’s being presented just a month before the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing. It is the first in Inoue’s trilogy of post-war life along with Okinawa-based Army on a Tree, whose film version has just been released, and Nagasaki-based Living With Mother.
We are in Hiroshima in 1948. A librarian who survived the atomic bombing through a quirk of fate is struggling with her memory of the horrors that she saw and her guilt for having lived despite the gruesome death of her friends and family. As she runs into the house terrified on a lightning-filled night, her father emerges from the closet to comfort her. We quickly gather that this is in fact the ghost of her father, who died in the bombing three years earlier.
1/5/25 (Sun), Broadway
I had hesitated to see this widely praised show, the most Tony-nominated play in history, because of the obscene fees tacked on to the ticket price on some sites. I eventually managed to find something closer to reasonable as the date got closer, but the whole process is exhausting. Worse, I overheard the guy directly behind me saying that he got his ticket for an even lower price for essentially the same seat. Something doesn’t feel right about that.
The show, set in a Sausalito recording studio in the 1970s, is about the making of an album by a newly formed band combining a three-person British rock group with an American duo. That sounds an awful lot like Fleetwood Mac, though the writer denies it. In any case, the show not only covers the mechanics of creating an album but the dynamics among the players, where relationships already on the edge are being further frayed by the clash of egos. The problem is that musicians may be artists but are human too, and the ideal of leaving one’s musical mark for posterity can jar with the ephemeral emotional needs of the people involved.
At this point, Broadway may as well rename itself Martha’s Vineyard. The NY Times reports this weekend that the still-previewing production of Othello with megastars Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal has a top price of $921 for a single seat and has attracted an average — average! — ticket price of $361.90. That’s before the show has even opened or been reviewed. Its lowest-priced ticket for full-view seats is $197, and even those seats are reportedly scarcer than usual.
Yes, it’s a star vehicle, the producers are simply responding to demand, costs are high, there are other lower-priced shows, and so on. But basically this is a show for the rich; the rest of America need not apply. While it’s heartening in a way that Shakespeare can command the highest prices on Broadway, the message that this is sending is going to drive away a large segment of the population, an ominous development for the industry. People may go to specific shows, and tourists will always be there. But is there going to be anything like a theatergoing habit in the future? Producers have created a cost structure that is going to strangle them in the end. Continue reading
9/12/24 (Thurs), West End
I had not planned on subjecting myself to what sounded like another diatribe on racism, but having told a friend to select whatever he’d like, I couldn’t complain. The result was predictable in its blame-the-whites attitude.
The first half hour offers three scenes of interracial couples on a plantation in outrageous master-slave relationships, including whips and boot-licking. These turn out to be therapy sessions aimed at confronting the racism that is supposedly hurting their marriages. The couples – a women with a man who had initially been brought by her husband to spice up relations, a gay couple, and a seemingly normal couple – are brought together after their fantasy sessions to discuss their feelings with two therapists.
The entire show reflects the racist attitude of the writer in assuming that the couples’ problems are rooted in racism, specifically from the white side. I’ve heard it all before; the writer is beyond redemption. I don’t feel a need to reflect on it, though I did enjoy the mocking pseudo-intellectual observations by the lesbian shrinks, which were quite funny. While it’s true that this is low-hanging fruit, I wish the rest of the show had been on that level.
3/24/24 (Sun)
I had an advantage over UK audiences seeing this soccer-related show since I had no idea who any of these people are or how the actual games turned out. It’s exactly the kind of show that the NT was made for and has received a fantastic staging.
I see where the stage adaptation of the popular anime film Spirited Away that played in Tokyo a few years back has transferred with the original cast to London, performing in Japanese (with English surtitles). I noted at the time that the Tokyo production seemed a “trial run” for a future production in the more profitable theater worlds of London or New York given the foreign talent involved, starting with director John Caird (whose wife is Japanese). The show appears to have received a rapturous welcome in London by both critics and audiences despite the language barrier and will be playing for an unusually long stay of four months. With London’s recent wonderful English-language staging of that other Japanese anime classic, My Neighbor Totoro (soon headed for the West End), the stage may be set, so to speak, for a flood of other anime adaptations, which have already taken Tokyo by storm in musical, Kabuki and other versions. Here is my take from the Tokyo run.
11/18/23 (Sat)
This highly praised show was being live streamed in the final week of its Broadway run. The League of Live Stream Theater, which was providing the broadcast, made everything super easy. When I discovered that I had accidentally bought tickets for the wrong performance, they instantly cleared it up for me, and when a friend who I had gifted a ticket couldn’t get online 30 seconds before the show, they immediately sent him a new e-mail that allowed him to catch the show from the beginning. Three cheers for them. The show has drawn crowds in New York but at a notably low average ticket price, suggesting that they’re attracting different audiences than usual; my friend felt from the laughter that many viewers must have been black since they recognized small points that others wouldn’t understand (as he proved to me). If so, that’s a very good thing for Broadway. Let’s hope that’s emulated in other shows.
10/22/23 (Sun)
I was jet lagged when I saw this superb production of C.P. Taylor’s 1981 classic in London almost precisely one year earlier, so I wasn’t going to miss the chance to catch the NT Live recording. As Holocaust dramas are not necessarily a big thing in Japan, I figured tickets would be easy to come by and booked that morning, only to discover that the theater was nearly sold out; I was lucky to get two adjoining seats. I presume that’s due to the presence of David Tennant in the lead role, though I’m not sure how they know him here.
9/29/23 (Fri)
This 1963 film, which I never knew existed, popped up when I was checking out articles about the present Broadway revival. It’s a film of the Broadway original from two years earlier with many of the members of the original cast, including writer Ossie Davis and his wife Ruby Dee. It’s nominally about a black preacher in Georgia who recruits a random woman from Dothan to impersonate his late cousin in order to win an inheritance, figuring the white guy in control of the funds won’t be able to tell the women apart. Naturally events soon spin out of control. But as with any good satire, it’s about a lot more than its story.
sekenbanashi 