Category Archives: Play

London (June 2017)

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London (June 7-15)

  • Lettice and Lovage, 6/7/17 (Wed), Menier
  • Love in Idleness, 6/8/17 (Thurs), West End
  • Half a Sixpence, 6/8/17 (Thurs), West End
  • Harry Potter and the Cursed Child I & II, 6/11/17 (Sun)
  • Kiss Me, 6/12/17 (Mon), Trafalgar Studios
  • Life of Galileo, 6/13/17 (Tues), West End
  • Tristan and Yseult, 6/14/17 (Wed), Globe
  • The Philanthropist, 6/15/17 (Thurs), Trafalgar Studios
  • Incident at Vichy, 6/15/17 (Thurs), Kings Head Theatre

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New York (May 2017)

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New York

  • Indecent, 5/9/17 (Tue), Broadway,
  • Groundhog Day, 5/10/17 (Wed), Broadway
  • A Doll’s House Part 2, 5/10/17 (Wed), Broadway
  • The Emperor Jones, 5/11/17 (Thurs), Off Broadway,
  • The Golden Apple, 5/12/17 (Fri), Encores!
  • Oslo, 5/13/17 (Sat), Lincoln Center
  • The Great Comet, 5/14/17 (Sun), Broadway
  • Sleep No More, 5/14/17 (Sun), Off Broadway

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London (Nov 2014)

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  • ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, 11/2/14 (Sun), Globe
  • King Charles III, 11/3/14 (Mon), West End
  • The Marriage of Figaro, 11/4/14 (Tues), ENO
  • Great Britain, 11/5/14 (Wed), West End
  • East is East, 11/6/14 (Thurs), West End
  • The Play That Goes Wrong, 11/6/14 (Thurs), West End
  • Miss Saigon, 11/7/14 (Fri), West End

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London (Jun 2014)

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  • Another Country, 6/9/14 (Mon), West End
  • Wolf Hall, 6/11/14 (Wed mat), RSC
  • Bring Up the Bodies, 6/11/14 (Wed eve), RSC
  • Titus Andronicus, 6/12/14 (Thurs mat), Globe
  • A Small Family Affair, 6/12/14 (Thurs eve), National
  • Incognito, 6/13/14 (Fri), Fringe
  • 1984, 6/14/14 (Sat mat), West End
  • Hobson’s Choice, 6/16/14 (Mon), Regent’s Park Open Air

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Curious Incident… (夜中の犬に起こった奇妙な事件)

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夜中の犬に起こった奇妙な事件 (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night)

4/19/14 (Sat), Tokyo

I had seen the London production last year (just a few weeks before the roof came crashing down during a performance) and was interested in seeing how the Japanese would approach the piece, especially in this much smaller space. Tickets were hard to come by because of the star, Morita Go, the idol singer who was so good in Kinkakuji a few years back.

The production was absolutely superb, making an equally compelling case for the material as in London. One excellent touch was the shift of the action from England to Japan – Christopher became Yukito, the trip from Swindon-London was Shizuoka-Tokyo, A-level exams became some sort of equivalent Japanese test and so on. The material was adapted so deftly that it didn’t feel at all like a foreign work, and it allowed the actors to behave normally instead of contorting themselves kabuki-like into their image of a Westerner. This approach is done at times for the classics, especially Shakespeare, but not enough for contemporary works. I hope this becomes a trend. Continue reading →

Take Me Out (テイク・ミー・アウト)

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テイクミーアウト（Take Me Out)

12/14/16 (Wed), Tokyo

A Japanese-language production of Richard Greenberg’s 2002 drama about a baseball player who comes out as gay and the consequences of that action. Continue reading →

Hedda Gabler (Hungarian State Theatre Cluj)

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  • Hedda Gabler, Hungarian State Theatre Cluj, 12/10/16 (Sat), Tokyo
  • Hedda Gabler, BBC film (1963), 12/11/16 (Sun)

This was a production by a Romanian group performing a Norwegian show in Hungarian in Japan – how’s that for globalism? This was part of the annual Ibsen Festival and one of three productions of Hedda (the others were in Japanese and Norwegian). The actors are from a Hungarian-speaking part of Romania, one of those oddities resulting from one war or other. I brought along a Hungarian friend among others to critique the translation.  Continue reading →

Kung Fu

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Kung Fu

3/20/14 (Sun), New York

Kung Fu, a portrait of Bruce Lee’s rise to fame, was a guilty pleasure. Other than the wonderful M Butterfly, I’m not wild about the author David Henry Hwang, who is obsessed with the tired theme of second-generation Asians struggling to adapt to America. (Bruce Lee, though raised in Hong Kong, was born in San Francisco and tried for years to make a life in the US.) I wish he’d go find his identity and come back with other ideas. And the reviews were lukewarm, which wasn’t encouraging. Still, the idea of a kung fu musical seemed so obvious that it immediately grabbed my attention.  Continue reading →