Cabaret (film)

Posted on by
  • Cabaret, 1/22/23 (Sun)

I hadn’t seen this film since it came out in 1972 and vaguely remember loving it. So when it showed up this month as part of a local theater’s morning classic film series, I jumped at the chance to catch it again on the big screen. It was much talked-about in its day for taking on themes like sexual liberation, anti-Semitism, homosexuality, abortion, and societal complacency in the face of evil, all in a musical format. It’s not the first musical to feature Nazis – The Sound of Music beat them to that. But that was a story of resistance to an established regime, whereas Cabaret examines how society got that way in the first place. The theater was impressively full for a movie over half-a-century old.

Continue reading →

Flower Drum Song (film)

Posted on by
  • Flower Drum Song, 1/20/23 (Fri)

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s mini-hit musical must have seemed old-fashioned even in its day (1958) given the quality of shows playing elsewhere on Broadway at that time, which included My Fair Lady, West Side Story and Gypsy. It pursues the well-trod theme of a generation clash between immigrants and their native children, i.e., tradition vs. assimilation, but this time in a Chinese-American context. The characters could easily be Italian, Jewish or Irish, but the Asian theme provides new visual and musical possibilities that must have attracted the creators, who already had two huge Asia-related hits under their belt.

Continue reading →

American Utopia (film)

Posted on by
  • American Utopia (film)

11/5/22 (Sat)

I didn’t know much about David Byrne, but several friends had raved about the Broadway run that was caught on film by no less than Spike Lee – a curious combination. This is basically a concert by a more-or-less expressionless Byrne accompanied by nine musicians and two dancers (a dynamic black woman and a campy redheaded man whose garish lipstick was the brightest thing on stage). Byrne was front and center in numerous spoken soliloquies and all musical numbers, though he allowed all performers to have a moment in the spotlight. He’s not the smoothest mover – I now have an idea of what I must look like on a dance floor – but has great stage presence. Byrne gave the glorified concert a theme of sorts in his initial speech: holding a model of a brain in hand, he pointed out that we lose connections within our brain as we age and expressed hope over the course of the show that we can connect again. Apparently the song list was a mix of the familiar and obscure, though most of his big hits are said to have made the cut. The audience was reportedly older, not a surprise given his age (upper 60s at the time), the nostalgia factor for viewers, and Broadway’s typically outlandish ticket prices.

Continue reading →

The Crucible (National Theatre)

Posted on by
  • The Crucible

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.

Continue reading →

My Neighbor Totoro (stage version)

Posted on by
  • My Neighbor Totoro

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 →

Marvellous

Posted on by
  • Marvellous

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 →

A Look Back: A Kabuki Christmas Carol

Posted on by

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.

Sekenbanashi's avatarsekenbanashi

KCC logo

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…

View original post 12,124 more words

Life of Pi (stage version)

Posted on by
  • Life of Pi

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.

Continue reading →

A Man (ある男)

Posted on by
  • ある男 (A Man)

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.

Continue reading →

Inn of Evil (いのちぼうにふろう) (stage version)

Posted on by
  • いのちぼうにふろう (Inn of Evil) 

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 →

Hairspray (ヘアスプレー)

Posted on by
  • ヘアスプレー (Hairspray)

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 →