Jesus Christ Superstar Live

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  • Jesus Christ Superstar Live

4/12/20 (Sun)

Andrew Lloyd Webber has opened up his catalog for free streaming over weekends during this irritating coronavirus plague. I missed the previous week’s opening, Joseph…, not realizing that the download expired after the weekend. So I made sure to tune in for the next biblical pop opera, Jesus, by Sunday, which was after all Easter. I’d never seen this in any version and would normally have preferred to wait and see it in a theater. But this was a live unedited film of a 2012 production, so it’s the next best thing. Plus the price was right.

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La Cage Aux Folles (play)

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  • La Cage Aux Folles (play), 3/2/20 (Mon), London

The gay (in every way) French farce La Cage Aux Folles has had a storied history, enjoying success as a French movie (at the time America’s highest grossing foreign-language film ever), a long-running musical since revived on Broadway twice (winning Tony Awards on all three occasions), and an unfortunate hit American film version with Robin Williams. Given its history, it is amazing that the source play has never been performed in English. That has been rectified with this production in a tiny Fringe theater off the beaten path in a spirited translation by the estimable Simon Callow. Since the first film, the show has become more and more preachy and less and less interesting with each incarnation. A particularly cavernous gap exists between the casual French film, which was interested in the gay relationship only for its comic potential, and the American versions, where the gayness was the entire point. I saw the French film in its original release in the 1970s and loved the unashamed treatment of the topic, including the fearlessly “out” portrayal by the leads and Albin’s unexpectedly moving revelation at the dinner, both daring for the time. The politician’s slow burn at Albin’s confession was also masterful. The American versions seem embarrassed by the gay content and go out of their way to make their wokeness known. I’ve always been curious about the source play that started the whole thing, so this was an opportunity I wasn’t going to miss.

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Parasite

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  • Parasite

12/27/19 (Fri)

Did the reviewers see the same movie I did? This Korean film has won rhapsodic praise as a social satire and is being talked about as an Oscar candidate, but it seemed to me an overblown attempt at farce relying on impossible situations and questionable characterizations.

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A Look Back: King Charles III

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The ongoing real-life drama of “Prince Harry: The Prisoner of Markle” brought to mind the character Prince Harry in Mike Bartlett’s fascinating stage show some five years back, “King Charles III“, that speculated on the future of the monarchy after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. The show’s Harry is portrayed as uncomfortable with his royal role and willing at one point to give it all up, finding comfort in the arms of a fun-loving working-class woman. That notion has proved amazingly prescient in light of current events. I thought at the time that “history might make this [show] un-revivable”, but it now seems to be playing out in real time. This may put paid to the idea that God doesn’t write a good second act. It remains to be seen how this develops (the drama offers a hopeful ending), but I figured it was a good opportunity to look back at this remarkable piece. I wish New York and Tokyo could do political drama this well.

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A Story of Floating Weeds (1934); Floating Weeds (1959)

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  • Floating Weeds (浮草, 1959), 12/1/19 (Sun)
  • A Story of Floating Weeds (浮草物語, 1934), 12/10/19 (Tues)

I was set to see Ozu Yasujiro’s 1934 silent version of this film, so I figured I’d first check out his 1959 remake, which adds not only sound but color. They both proved very fine films, and despite a nearly identical composition and story progression, seeing them side by side was instructive. Continue reading →

Noh: Hanjo, Yugyo Yanagi (班女、遊行柳)

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  • Noh: 班女、遊行柳  (Hanjo, Yugyo Yanagi)

11/17/19 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater (Tokyo)

The pamphlet for today’s two shows say that they share an ambiguous ending that is supposed to make us wonder what happens to the characters thereafter. Both are also steeped in references to Chinese poetry, and I noted that they each refer in passing to the ancient Shirakawa Barrier in Fukushima, an oft-used place name in poetry and Noh plays that is associated with autumn.

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The Ball at Anjo House (安城家の舞踏会)

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  • 安城家の舞踏会 (The Ball at Anjo House)

10/27/19 (Sun)

Having recently seen the fun An Osaka Tale, I wanted to check out more of director Yoshimura Kozaburo’s work, and this was an obvious first stop. It is often held to be one of the finest of all Japanese films of the 1940s.

The 1947 film is a Chekhovian portrait of an aristocratic family unwilling to face their decline in postwar society. This is not a traditional Japanese household: it is a formerly titled family living in a palatial Western-style home with a father who studied painting in Paris, a son who plays classical piano and a daughter who (at least in the course of the film) wears only Western clothing. The family appears to have lived in the past mainly off its inherited wealth and property. But times have changed: it survived the war by borrowing money from a slimy businessman who profited in the munitions trade by using the family name, and is now facing collapse in the wake of land reforms, the abolition of the aristocracy and new taxes enforced by the Occupation government (still in power when the movie was made). Continue reading →

A Look Back: Mary Poppins (West End)

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I see where the stage version of Mary Poppins has returned to the West End to largely favorable reviews. It’s hard to know how it will fare given its unexpectedly short run last time around; three years would qualify as a hit for most shows, but hopes had been riding particularly high for Poppins given the potent title, family-friendly content and combined power of mega-producers Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, who must have thought they had another The Lion King or Phantom (respectively) on their hands. Still, it did well enough, and it’s no surprise to see them coming back for another try.

I was less taken by the show, at least in its original production, due to its ham-handed approach to the material. In trying to bring together the original British novels and Disney’s lighter film version, the show loses its way entirely. Continue reading →

Rage (怒り)

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  • 怒り (Rage)

10/17/19 (Wed), Tokyo

Lee Sang-il’s 2018 film opens with the murder of an innocent couple in their own home by a drifter, who paints the character for “rage” (怒) on their wall before escaping. This is followed by three unrelated stories in Tokyo, Chiba and Okinawa featuring drifters who could all conceivably be the killer. The film is on the surface a suspense tale keeping us guessing which one is the villain, but its real theme involves the nature of trust and mistrust – “Doubt” would actually be a better title than “Rage”, which doesn’t quite make sense in context. Continue reading →

An Osaka Tale (大阪物語)

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  • 大阪物語 (An Osaka Tale)

10/13/18 (Sun), Tokyo

A highly entertaining piece of 1957 devised by Mizoguchi Kenji from a 17th-century tale and ably taken over after his death by Yoshimura Kozaburo. It was reminiscent of Mizoguchi’s Chikamatsu Story: the lead was a stingy businessman ultimately undermined by his own stubbornness, and Kagawa Kyoko was a put-upon daughter who gets the poor clerk in the end. But this was a comedic approach to the material, which, though not as deep, worked wonderfully on its own terms.

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Every Day a Good Day (日日是好日)

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  • 日日是好日 (Every Day a Good Day)

10/12/18 (Sat), Tokyo

A beautiful meditative film of 2018 whereby the tea ceremony (“the way of tea”) serves as a metaphor for several zen-based ideas: that the meaning of things becomes evident only over time, that we should feel rather than analyze, that we should enjoy every instant in life as an experience that will never occur again.

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