West Side Story (360° version)

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  • West Side Story (360° version)

8/18/19 (Sun), Tokyo

The highlight in this specially packaged production of the ever-popular West Side Story was not the show but the theater. Inspired reportedly by a similar venue in Amsterdam, the IHI Stage Around Tokyo has a donut-like structure with a stage that wraps around the audience, who sit at center on a revolving platform. Unlike Kabuki, where the stage revolves, it is the audience seating that turns in this case, stopping in each scene at the point at which a specific set has been arranged. Since the sets do not have to be struck for each scene, this allows for incredibly lifelike scenery decked out in eye-popping detail. Nearly all the locations – New York streets, tenement housing, dress shop – were more like movie sets than stage scenery. Doc’s drugstore happened to be positioned near the exit at intermission, and I nearly walked in, thinking it was the theater bar. The image that came to mind was the NBC Live musicals, which use huge sound stages rather than normal sets. This is complemented by intricate lighting effects and curtain projections (designed respectively by Broadway veterans Ken Billington and 59 Productions) as we revolve to the next scene, such as the shadows of a dancing Maria projected against the curtains as Tony strolls and sings her praises. The actors would often walk with us along the 360° stage or out into the audience as we revolve toward the next scene, passing other actively engaged set pieces along the way to create a continuous momentum. It was an innovative approach, to be sure.

Whether that in itself will appeal to audiences is an open question. Continue reading →

Harold Prince’s final bow

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  • Harold Prince’s final bow

It is frustrating that the last show presented by Harold Prince, the immensely influential Broadway producer and director who died yesterday at 91, will be the misconceived retrospective of his career, Prince of Broadway, that played mercifully short runs in Japan in 2015 and on Broadway in 2017.

That career is eminently worthy of a retrospective, encompassing some of the greatest musicals in Broadway history. Indeed, it is arguable that the entire trajectory of musical theater would have been different without him. As director, he changed the look and feel of musicals with productions like Cabaret, Company and Evita that took on weightier themes and bolder approaches than what was then the standard fare, changing the game for all subsequent musicals. The history of Broadway in the second half of the 20th century can’t be written without him.

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Noh: Jinen Koji, Shozon (自然居士、正尊)

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  • Noh: 自然居士、正尊  (Jinen Koji, Shozon)

7/21/19 (Sun), Tokyo Umewaka Noh

Today’s offerings were both genzai Noh plays dealing with real-world events rather than ghosts. They date respectively from the beginning and end of the active period of Noh drama, the first by Noh’s esteemed founder Kan’ami and the second by the much later Yajiro Nagatoshi. They present a striking contrast, symbolizing how elegance and dance gave way to an emphasis on action in Noh’s evolution.

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Wife (妻)

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  • 妻 (Wife), 7/19/19 (Fri)

Naruse’s 1953 film, based on a story by his muse Hayashi Fumiko, opens with voiceovers by a wife and husband grumbling to themselves about their unhappy marriage. The wife Mineko complains about the husband Juichi’s lack of ambition and ability, their financial strain and Juichi’s clear lack of interest in her. She busies herself with small sewing jobs and overseeing their upstairs tenants to boost their income, but gets little support from Juichi. Meanwhile, Juichi bemoans his bureaucratic job, his wife’s undeniably slovenly ways and the draining routine of his unexciting home life. He compares the sloppy bento prepared by his wife with the beautifully arranged lunch eaten by the cheery typist at the next desk. He understandably becomes drawn to the typist, who returns the affection. Mineko is livid when she finds out about their secret trysts and confronts the woman, who is shamed into returning to her hometown. The couple thus remain together but out of habit rather than romance. The film ends with another set of voiceovers as the wife and husband each contemplate whether to leave the other – would that solve anything? would being single at this point be any easier for either? – while carefully avoiding showing how that is resolved.

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Kabuki: Takatoki, Saigo and the Pig Princess, Suo Otoshi, The Medicine Peddler (高時, 西郷と豚姫, 素襖落, 外郎売)

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  • Kabuki: 高時, 西郷と豚姫, 素襖落, 外郎売 (Takatoki, Saigo and the Pig Princess, Suo Otoshi, The Medicine Peddler)

7/24/19 (Wed), Tokyo Kabukiza

This month’s performance was completely sold out on the strength of a six-year-old actor, son of superstar Ebizo, taking on a role usually played by an adult. The boy is often featured in his father’s widely followed blog, and Ebizo fever has basically enveloped him as well. The first three shows today were all Meiji or Taisho Era pieces that veer from traditional Kabuki in certain ways, while the last, in which the child appears, is a once-archaic Edo Era sketch that was revived/reconstructed in 1985.

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Rosmersholm

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  • Rosmersholm, 6/6/19 (Thurs), West End

I hadn’t planned on seeing this piece, put off by the unwieldy title and not knowing much about it, but it was the least painful option on the half-price board. Described as minor Ibsen, it is rarely revived and is being produced commercially without the usual run at subsidized locations like the National Theatre to give it credence. Nevertheless, the reviews were encouraging, and I figured I could at least tick it off the box of shows you must see before you die.

It turned out to be a sharp and provocative drama dealing with political extremism and family intrigue, nothing minor about it. Continue reading →

Rutherford & Son

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  • Rutherford & Son, 6/15/19 (Sat), National Theatre

Revival of a 1912 show written, unusually for the times, by a female playwright, Githa Sowerby (adapted here by Polly Findlay). I had automatically assumed this would be a feminist tract, but that proved untrue: all here are trapped under the thumb of the domineering father and their own insecurities, their fates portrayed honestly if pitilessly. The show is less interested in grand themes than presenting an unflinching portrait of the destruction of a family.

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West End diversity: Perception vs. reality

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7/10/19 (Wed)

I’ve previously written about the ethnic diversity in London theater here and here, including my impression that certain ethnicities appear on stage far too often to be blind casting or coincidental. Now there are statistics to back that up. Research by British theater magazine The Stage finds that black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) performers account for 38% of musical performers as of April 2019, starkly higher than their 13% ratio of the UK population.

Black performers in particular account for 31.7% of all musical roles (i.e., 85% of the BAME total) despite being only 3% of the UK population. East and South Asians, who significantly outnumber blacks in the general population (7%), account together for only 3.7% of West End musical performers. The percentage for white actors is 62.2% (87.1% of general population) and other ethnicities 2.2%.

So the diversity problem is solved at least for black performers, right? Of course not, you insensitive hick. Continue reading →

Sweat

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  • Sweat, 6/13/19 (Thurs), West End

This searing 2015 work by Lynn Nottage, making its London premiere, is an extraordinarily powerful portrait of the devastation wrought by globalization, represented here by NAFTA, on small-town America. It opens (and closes) wearily with an unnecessary framework of two former friends speaking separately with a parole officer, making me think we were in for a didactic all-talk-no-show show. But it quickly gets into gear once the drama proper gets going and never looks back.

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The Lehman Trilogy

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  • The Lehman Trilogy, West End

From Anatevka to Alabama: by sheer coincidence, my matinee show Fiddler on the Roof ended with European Jews emigrating for America, while the evening show featured European Jewish immigrants arriving in America. The Lehman Trilogy, written by Hebrew-speaking Italian playwright Stefano Massini (adapted and translated by Ben Power), is a phenomenal history of the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers over a 150-year period, taking on the history of capitalism in the West and gradual erosion of the titular family’s life as Jews since its immigration from Germany in the 19th century – a continuation of Fiddler in its way. The fictional musical explored the gradual breakdown of tradition in the lives of individual families. This epic drama looks at where that leads.

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