11/1/22 (Tues), London National Theatre
A splendid production. The play itself feels overly long with way too many characters and some leaden dialogue, but there’s no denying its powerful narrative drive. The theme is always relevant but felt particularly so after the shocking treatment (at least from a non-American perspective) of those with alternative views during the past several years.
10/27/22 (Thurs), Barbican
You have to be brave to take on a piece as beloved as this 1988 film, one of the most famous of all Japanese anime. I wonder if the Japanese creators preferred a foreign production so as to avoid dealing with overheated domestic expectations. The Tokyo production of Spirited Away was spectacular but simply put the movie on stage (think Beauty and the Beast), and the question here is whether Totoro would take a more theatrical approach (think The Lion King).
The results were magical. Continue reading
10/25/22 (Tues), West End
A friend selected this play, apparently thinking from the photos that it was some kind of circus. As it happens, the play is a celebration of the life of Neil Baldwin, a physically disabled man with a speech impediment who became known as a professional clown and mascot for a local sports team (at times in a chicken suit). His unflagging can-do attitude was evidently an inspiration to the public, especially in those less-evolved times, and he has been recognized by the Queen and portrayed in a film biography.
That’s good for those who know about him, but rather trying for those of us who don’t. Continue reading
10/22/22 (Sat), London National Theatre
Pearl Cleage’s 1990 show, making its UK debut in a production by Lynette Linton, is an entertaining look at Harlem residents during the so-called Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s. Continue reading
Tis the season, so I thought I’d repost this script. The show had a successful run in Tokyo, the land of Kabuki, a few years back. Enjoy.
This is my Kabuki version of the Dickens classic reset in late 19th-century Japan. That setting is deliberate: Scrooge’s youth would be the Edo Era of samurai and shoguns; his present the Meiji Era, when Japan opened itself to the world; and his future the increasingly Westernized Late Meiji or Taisho Era, all visually very distinct periods. I originally wrote the show in Japanese for a Kabuki script competition by Japan’s National Theatre. That didn’t work out, but when a local English-language troupe took interest, I rewrote it in English. The show takes place on a Japanese New Year’s Eve, which shares many similarities with Christmas Eve in the West, but the producer insisted on retaining the “Christmas Carol” title for marketing purposes (the Japanese title is different). The production, performed in English by a multicultural cast at a central Tokyo theater, proved a huge success in a sellout run…
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10/22/22 (Sat), London
A 2019 dramatization by Lolita Chakrabarti of Yann Martel’s best-seller about a boy who survives a shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean that kills his family, the entire crew and its cargo of zoo animals only to find himself on a rickety lifeboat with four zoo-mates, including, most frighteningly, a hungry Bengal tiger. A stage version seemed an audacious move given the sweep of the novel (from a small Indian village to a large ship to months on the open waters) as well as the presence of animals, inevitably meaning puppets of some kind. But I was ready for anything.
11/26/22 (Sun)
Ishikawa Kei’s multi-tiered exploration of identity. Rie (Ando Sakura), traumatized after losing her youngest child and divorcing her husband, has moved back with her small son to her hometown in Kyushu, where she works in the family’s stationery store. She comes to know a shy young customer named Daisuke (Kubota Masataka), who gradually opens up to her after showing her his sketches. Now working as a lumberjack, Daisuke tells her that he comes from a family that runs a well known inn in Ikaho Hot Springs (great place) not far from Tokyo. They fall in love, marry and have a child of their own, and he proves a wonderful husband and father. Some time later, however, tragedy strikes when Daisuke is killed in a work accident. That shock hardly prepares Rie for the next one: at his memorial service a year later, she is visited by Daisuke’s older brother, who upon seeing the dead man’s photo on the altar, reveals that the person in the photo is not in fact Daisuke – that is, Rie’s late husband was not who he pretended to be. Rie, stunned, asks her lawyer, Kido (Tsumabuki Satoshi), to find out just who it was she married.
10/3/22 (Mon)
This 1997 stage adaptation was written specifically for this theater, an outdoor venue in a small town on Noto Peninsula that was built for screen legend Nakadai Tatsuya and his Mumeijuku theater group. The group has been performing there for years, concentrating primarily on Western classics. Miyazaki Kyoko, Nakadai’s late wife, seems to have based the play less on the original novel than on her screenplays for the film and subsequent television version. The stage show proved to be her final work. The film, a small masterpiece, largely takes place in or around a tavern, so a stage version made sense on paper. I was eager to see what they had done with it, especially with Nakadai revisiting his old film in a new role.
Nakadai, who will be 90 next month, is ageless. His voice carries to the back of the theater with no strain or mannerisms, and his acting remains powerful. He has shifted from his film role of the heartless smuggler Sadashichi to the equally important role of the tavern keeper, who seems somewhat more prominent here. Much older than everyone else on stage, he brings gravitas to the role in a natural performance. Though celebrating his 70th anniversary in show business, he remains in full command of his powers. It is an impressive performance regardless of his age.
Which is a good thing, because no one else on stage is remotely in that category. Continue reading
10/1/22 (Sat)
I figured this show would be impossible to stage in Japan since it has a female lead, which by itself makes most musicals a losing proposition here, and one at that who can sing, dance and dominate the show. What I didn’t count on was Watanabe Naomi, a highly likeable plus-sized comedienne who made her mark imitating dancing stars like Beyoncé. She is the only face on the poster for the show – the first time I can ever remember that for a big musical, which would usually put as many faces on the poster as possible whether relevant or not in order to sell even one extra ticket to the performers’ fans. So a lot was riding on her shoulders. This is her first stage show, meaning she’s going to be very physically tested over the multi-month run.
Happily she lived up to her billing and then some. Continue reading
9/25/22 (Sun)
Kobayashi Masaki’s 1971 black-and-white film about smugglers on an island just off Edo who decide for once in their lives to do a good deed. I wanted to see it ahead of next week’s stage version featuring the film’s star Nakadai Tatsuya, who at 89 is still very much active with his Mumeijuku theater group and celebrating his 70th anniversary as an actor.
The official English title, Inn of Evil, is rather odd. For one thing, the facility referred to is neither an inn nor evil. The frequenters are basically just random misfits rejected by society; it is the police who prove evil, such as spontaneously killing a random man for being too talkative. Also, the “inn”, Anrakutei (安楽亭), is in fact a tavern, translated in some essays as Easy Tavern but more like Tavern of Comfort. The Japanese title Inochi Bo ni Furo, literally “let’s give up our lives”, better sums up what’s at stake and appears in the dialogue (twice). The phrase usually refers to wasting one’s life or giving up one’s chances in life, but the active tense here suggests a suicidal act, presumably for a higher cause, a well-worn theme in Japan.
Kurahara Koreyoshi’s accomplished 1960 flick (the Japanese title is “A Certain Blackmail”) is sometimes referred to as the first Japanese noir, and while I doubt that’s true, it does seem to be the first to have made a real impression. Kurahara is best known for the Takakura Ken vehicle Antartica (南極物語), which reigned for years as Japan’s highest-grossing domestic film (and remains second for non-anime works). This film, worlds away from that epic, is a tightly wound suspense piece that manages to lay out a carefully plotted story and nicely delineated characters in just over an hour. Talk about efficiency. It’s based on a story by Takigawa Kyo, who gave his villain the similar name Takita Kyosuke.
This is a reproduction of Diane Paulus’ imaginative Broadway revival of a few years back with a mix of Japanese actors and foreign acrobats. The Paulus rendering was a big success in both its touring version and the Japanese adaptation two years ago, so it’s no surprise to see it revived. The leading player is again played by half-black pop singer Crystal Kay, thus keeping the basic idea of a black lead. (The role in the first Japanese production years ago was taken by Suzuki Papaya, a comedian whose only black connection is his trademark afro wig.) They’ve also managed, intentionally or not, to find another performer with foreign blood for the title role, with the half-Spanish Shirota Yu replaced by the Japan-raised Burmese musical actor Morisaki Win. An American woman reviewing the Kay-Shirota version marveled that biracial performers were cast in both of the main roles, seeing this as an earth-shattering sign of growing diversity in Japan. She seems unaware of the many popular mixed-race or mixed-nationality performers that have appeared on Japanese stages over the years, such as Kusakari Masao, Miyazawa Rie, Okada Masumi and so on; the majority of the cast in a production of Rent some years back was half-Japanese. Japanese don’t make a big deal of it, and I wish Americans in particular would follow their lead.
The production still looks great. Paulus has managed to take a creaky show that was known mainly for Bob Fosse’s iconic staging and give it a new take that reinvigorates it. It’s still a relic of the flower-power generation, but it plays beautifully. Continue reading
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