Hamlet (NT Live)

Posted on by
  • Hamlet (NT Live)

8/3/17 (Thurs), Tokyo

An encore showing of the Barbican production, filmed by the National Theatre people. This Hamlet had broken records not only on stage but in its NT Live incarnation at movie theaters two years ago thanks to the popularity of megastar Benedict Cumberbatch as the lead. While I don’t get the sex symbol thing at all, he was excellent as the monster in the NT’s Frankenstein some years back (also a sellout here in Tokyo), and I’m impressed at any TV/film star who’s willing to put himself out there in a challenging role like this.  Continue reading →

A look back: Tokyo’s Prince of Broadway

Posted on by

A look back: Tokyo’s Prince of Broadway

I see they’re going ahead with Prince of Broadway, the long-aborning retrospective of producer/director Harold Prince’s estimable career in the theater. While noting (and hoping) that the show may have been dramatically transformed since then, I recall that the preliminary version that played in Tokyo in October 2015, reviewed here, was mainly a succession of I-produced-this-I-directed-that musical scenes plucked from his various shows and recreated with little or no context. It was like a Wikipedia entry on stage, a list of disembodied names and songs. As I noted then:

The numbers are nearly all famous songs presented with costumes and scenery reminiscent of their shows but no background whatsoever. So we get an old guy with a milk cart wishing he were rich, a painted emcee welcoming us to a nightclub, a woman in a chair pouting about clowns, a gravelly voiced woman who wants to propose a toast, a man in a prison cell babbling about dressing up mannequins, and so forth. Not remotely interesting to anyone who doesn’t know these shows and songs…and not particularly interesting to me, a big musical buff who’s seen this all before.

Continue reading →

New York (March 2015)

Posted on by

New York (March 2015)

  • Semele, 3/8/15 (Sun), BAM
  • The Audience, 3/10/15 (Tues), Broadway
  • On the 20th Century, 3/11/15 (Wed), Broadway
  • Honeymoon in Vegas, 3/11/15 (Wed), Broadway
  • An Octoroon, 3/18/15 (Wed), Off Broadway
  • An American in Paris, 3/19/15 (Thurs), Broadway
  • Paint Your Wagon, 3/20/15 (Fri), Encores!
  • The King & I, 3/21/15 (Sat), Lincoln Center
  • On the Town, 3/21/15 (Sat), Broadway
  • Finding Neverland, 3/22/15 (Sun), Broadway

Continue reading →

Much Ado About “Comet”

Posted on by
  • Much Ado About Comet

A producer trying desperately to save a sinking show removes a relatively unknown actor (with full compensation) in exchange for a major box office draw. Seems straightforward enough.

Now try it again: A producer trying desperately to save a sinking show removes a relatively unknown black actor (with full compensation) in exchange for a major Caucasian box office draw. If that sounds different to you, then the problem may be you.  Continue reading →

Phantom of the Opera (Japanese)

Posted on by
  • オペラ座の怪人 (Phantom of the Opera)

7/22/17 (Sat), Yokohama

I hadn’t seen the stage version of Phantom since Las Vegas in 2007 (and before that in NY in 1997 – there’s a pattern there). This was the first time to catch the massively successful Japanese version. I was invited by a friend who’s seen the show, by his estimate, around 120 times (!!) and had secured extra tickets for this sold-out-as-usual run. The Shiki Theatre Company, the keeper of the Japanese version, has multiple casts in the main roles and, to prevent a bias in sales toward the more popular performers, doesn’t announce which cast is appearing until a week in advance, way too late to score tickets. Pretty slimy. (Shiki’s uncomplaining fans, like my friend, simply buy tickets for multiple performances in hopes of landing their preferred actor/actress.) Unfortunately for my friend, the phantom this time was his fourth choice among the five playing the role. But the rest of us were happy just to be there.  Continue reading →

Kabuki: Daemon and the Flower Palace (駄右衛門花御所異聞)

Posted on by
  • Kabuki: 駄右衛門花御所異聞 (Daemon and the Flower Palace)

7/18/17 (Tues), Tokyo

This is a rarely seen drama about the real-life gangster Nippon Daemon first produced in 1761 (under the name Akiba Gongen Kaisen Banashi) and apparently drastically rewritten for Ebizo. More accurately, it has been reworked as a vanity piece for the star. A villain has stolen a precious manuscript and magical religious heirloom from a noble family in hopes of toppling it and taking over the country. The rest hardly matters.  Continue reading →

Onibaba (鬼婆)

Posted on by
  • 鬼婆 (Onibaba)

7/11/17 (Tues), DVD

This singular 1964 film by Shindo Kaneto about two country women scraping out a life in the turmoil of 14th-century Japan was described to me as a horror flick, but that description doesn’t seem quite right. Horror can be easily forgotten once the thrill is over. That is not the case with this movie.  Continue reading →

The Deep Blue Sea (1955 film)

Posted on by
  • The Deep Blue Sea (1955 film)

7/8/17 (Sat), Tokyo

My second viewing of last year’s National Theatre production the previous day inspired me to seek out the old film version, which appeared just a few years after the original 1952 stage show and was scripted by Rattigan himself. (There are also several BBC television adaptations, most recently in 1994, and a bizarre film deconstruction from 2011 that I turned off after five minutes.) This first film stars Vivien Leigh, just coming off Streetcar, as well as the original stage performer Kenneth More as the lover Freddie.  Continue reading →

Nothing Sacred

Posted on by
  • Nothing Sacred

6/29/17 (Thurs), DVD

I’m not always a fan of screwball comedies, which often seem to be trying too hard. But I loved Carole Lombard in her immediately preceding My Man Godfrey, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

A flailing newspaper reporter Wally Cook seeks to make his name with a human interest story on a small-town girl named Hazel Flagg who is dying of radium poisoning. Unbeknownst to him, Hazel has discovered that she was misdiagnosed and is not dying after all, interrupting her plans to whoop it up for her final weeks (she moans about being “brought to life twice – and each time in Warsaw”). She thus jumps at the chance when the reporter offers her an all-expense-paid trip to New York to help her enjoy her short remaining life – that is, he wants to exploit her to sell papers, and she wants to exploit him to see the big city. Her initial enthusiasm for the city fades quickly when she finds herself the object of pious pity everywhere she turns, including from Wally himself. As the double double-cross proceeds, he makes the mistake of falling for her. Hazel tries to sneak away and fake a suicide, after which she hopes to vanish, but is caught at the last minute by Wally – and she starts to fall too. An examination by eminent European doctors finds her fit as a fiddle, but by this time too many people are invested in the story to risk exposure. So they come up with a ruse…  Continue reading →

The Threepenny Opera (NT Live)

Posted on by
  • The Threepenny Opera (NT Live)

6/21/17 (Tues), Tokyo

A dark sleaze-fest by Rufus Norris. There was no papering over the cruelty or cynicism of the show, though I could have done without the unnecessarily crude rendering of the lyrics in English by author Simon Stephens (lots of shits and fucks). Vulgarities abound in the book as well, such as the fingers up the butt and a line about cheese that I wish I could forget. Macheath remains the two-, three- or more-timer who has made Polly his latest wife, raising the wrath of (1) her parents, who want him dead (he was also shtupping her mother), (2) his other wife Lucy (he tries to convince her that he wants Polly only for her brains), and (3) Lucy’s father, Inspector Tiger Brown, who as Mack’s former collaborator (and apparently lover) feels betrayed. Another lover Jenny is bribed to give away his whereabouts, and the situation deteriorates from there. The show and its focus on London’s low-life were conceived by Brecht basically as an excuse for his anti-capitalist screed, which remains hard to take seriously as social critique. But it’s good fun to watch.  Continue reading →