Rose

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  • Rose

9/25/20 (Fri)

Revival of Martin Sherman’s one-woman show, performed by Maureen Lipman and being streamed worldwide. The show was originally written for her back in 1999, but she never got around to it; it ended up being done at London’s National Theatre with an acclaimed performance by Olympia Dukakis. Presumably having nothing else to do stage-wise at the moment with all the theaters in London closed, she’s finally taken on the role, performing alone in an empty theater for live broadcast. One positive side to the wait is that she’s actually closer to the age of the character now.

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Porgy and Bess (Met Live)

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  • Porgy and Bess (Met Live)

9/22/20 (Tues), Tokyo

The Met Live film that had been broadcast abroad during its performance on February 1 finally arrived in Tokyo theaters this week. The production, the first at the Met in nearly 30 years, had received rapturous reviews and was sold out throughout the run. The production had debuted in London at the ENO in 2018, but they presumably had to expand it for the gigantic Met stage. I thought it would be bashed for cultural appropriation and its none-too-flattering portrayal of black life, but it seems to have been warmly welcomed this time, not least for the opportunity it provides to black singers. (The Met actually had to import a large portion of the chorus from elsewhere.) At any rate, it proved hugely popular and will presumably be around for a while as long as they can secure the main singers, which doesn’t seem to be a problem these days.

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Bunraku: Komochi Yamamba, Gonza the Lancer (嫗山姥, 鑓の権三)

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  • Bunraku: Komochi Yamamba, Gonza the Lancer (嫗山姥, 鑓の権三)

9/13/20 (Sun), National Theatre

These are the first Bunraku performances since the pandemic hysteria began six months earlier, and they’re still in ultra-cautious mode: taking temperatures, requiring masks, asking us to tear off our own ticket stubs, and, most consequentially for them, cutting the seat count drastically by leaving every other seat open (even for those seeing the show together) and closing off the entire section in front of the narrators, presumably to prevent virus-filled spit from hitting the audience. It was all extremely grating, but I guess we should be grateful that at least there was a show. There were unusually no English earphone guides this month for some reason, so my companions had to rely on the detailed summary provided in the program.

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Marty (1953 TV)

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  • Marty (1953 TV)

8/31/20 (Mon)

Paddy Chayefsky’s 1953 television play, telecast live back in the day when they did that sort of thing. Its favorable reception spawned a slightly expanded and largely recast movie version that became a sleeper hit, snaring an Oscar against Hollywood heavyweights and sparking a boom in TV-to-movie adaptations.

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Swoon

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  • Swoon

8/23/20 (Sun)

Tom Kalin’s artsy 1992 film based directly on the Leopold and Loeb case, a contrast with the fictionalized Rope. Leopold and Loeb are presented outright as sexually involved, though the former appears more serious in the relationship than the latter. The boys, rich and extremely bright, would seem to have everything to live for. But through boredom or cynicism or apathy, they have turned to livening up their existence by pursuing various crimes such as fires and larceny to see what they can get away with. Loeb now ups the ante, setting his sights on murder, specifically the murder of a child. The movie basically follows the case after that, including the murder, their capture, their reaction (each trying to blame the other) and ultimate fate.

Whereas Rope was more interested in the motives and intellectual back-and-forth of the murderers, tying this to Nazi ideology, Swoon is a more personal look at Loeb’s controlling nature and Leopold’s obsessive desire to please him. Continue reading →

The Farewell

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  • The Farewell

10/12/20 (Mon), Tokyo

I was eager to see this much-praised film from last year, which has just arrived in Tokyo theaters. I’m not sure what took so long for it to get to Japan since it deals with issues that are relevant here and features a minor Japanese character, though Asian-themed US films aren’t always as popular as American filmmakers think they should be – it flopped big-time in China despite a Chinese cast and extensive Chinese dialogue. The English title is much better than the Chinese 别告诉她 (Don’t Tell Her), but the Japanese is worse as it simply uses the English as is, which has no meaning to most audiences here.

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RIP Encores!

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  • RIP Encores!

Politics appear to have claimed another scalp with New York City Center’s venerable Encores! series. The new artistic director Lear deBessonet, working with Clint Ramos in the curious new position of “producing creative director”, has decided that entertainment is not as important for modern audiences as relevance. In addition to “revivals of hidden gems” (no argument there), deBessonet says that the future of the series lies in “productions where artists reclaim work for our time through their own personal lens, and celebrations that look at the ways musical theater can connect us, in this city and across the country”. For next year, they have chosen two black-themed musicals, “The Life” and “The Tap Dance Kid”, dating respectively from 1997 and 1983 (a third show, to be drawn from a classic rather than forgotten musical, will be announced later). In other words, the point is not the music or even the quality of the work, but the subject matter.

I suppose they mean well with their personal lenses and connections, but did they really have to pick Encores! for this? Continue reading →

A look back: Rent (2012 Japanese version)

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（日本語版はページ下部にあります)

I came across an article I wrote for GQ Japan on a Japanese production of the musical Rent in the 26 October 2012 edition. The article was in Japanese and significantly cut (I wrote way too much as usual), so I’m including both the English and unedited Japanese versions here. Rent is hugely popular in Japan, and there have been other productions since. This is the view as of 2012. 

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Les Blancs (NT Live at Home)

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  • Les Blancs (NT Live at Home)

7/9/20 (Wed)

A fascinating play by Lorraine Hansberry of Raisin in the Sun fame, left unfinished at her early death and reworked by her husband for its debut in 1970. She wrote this apparently in response to a production she attended in 1961 of Genet’s hugely successful Les Nègres, wanting to jettison the exoticism of his show for a more realistic portrait of colonialism and the African experience.

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