NBC has announced that its live holiday musical for 2017 will be the golden oldie Bye Bye Birdie starring Jennifer Lopez. I was surprised to see the announcement before the airing of this year’s event, Hairspray, in December, but I don’t blame them for wanting to get the word out. It’s a terrific choice — an upbeat family musical with a familiar title, a great score (including several standards), a good range of wacky characters, an Elvis spoof and a nostalgic portrait of uncomplicated life in small-town America. It is set roughly in the same period as Grease and Hairspray, the two live musicals that immediately preceded it (albeit on different networks) — the late 50s and early 60s are a hot time these days, I guess, not to mention high school life. The show was apparently proposed by Lopez herself, evidently a fan of the (rather altered) movie. Hooray for her. Continue reading
The Little Mermaid (リットルマーメード )
リットルマーメード (The Little Mermaid) (stage)
8/24/13 (Sat), Gekidan Shiki, Tokyo
This show had stumbled badly on Broadway some five years ago, blamed widely on a bizarre and overblown production by a European operatic director. (Videos of some of the numbers suggest that the critics were right.) Shiki has picked up another version that has been reconceived by an American designer, which has reportedly been well received in Europe. I didn’t see the original stage version and didn’t have any real interest in the new production, but when a friend offered the impossible-to-get cheap seats in the last two rows, it seemed worth a look. Continue reading
Emma Rice gets the boot
10/26/16 (Wed)
Emma Rice is being shown the door as artistic director of London’s Globe Theatre after less than a year in charge. She will step down in 2018. The board felt that her extensive use of lightning and sound technology violated the spirit of the Globe, which was established to present plays in conditions similar to those under which Shakespeare worked.
I loved Rice’s previous work with the innovative Kneehigh group, and thought that the spare style she perfected in those shows would translate well to the Globe. Sadly, I have to admit that I was wrong and agree with the critics that she didn’t seem to have a clue what the Globe was all about. Continue reading
Takarazuka Boys (宝塚 BOYS)
宝塚 BOYS (Takarazuka Boys)
8/7/13 (Wed), Tokyo
A dramatization of Hankyu Corporation’s efforts to create a male counterpart to its all-girl Takarazuka troupe after the war. Given the experiment’s failure and the setting amid the ashes of a defeated Japan, I assumed the play would be a standard weepie. But a friend invited me, and I figured it may at least have some camp value.
It was pretty much as feared. Continue reading
Three Idiots
Three Idiots
8/4/2013 (Sun), Tokyo
The comedy Three Idiots (2009) is apparently India’s biggest grossing film ever, which in itself piqued my curiosity. It’s unusually long for a comedy at 170 min, but its run in Japan has been exceptionally long for an Indian movie, suggesting that it has been well received, and was coming to an end. So without knowing anything more, I figured I’d go for it. Continue reading
Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever
7/31/13 (Wed)
I had tried to download Saturday Night Fever on iTunes on a whim while I was on an island in Thailand, but it was so painfully slow – it was set to take nearly three days at that speed – that I gave up. I finished the job back in Tokyo, which took about two minutes. I hadn’t seen the film since its debut in 1977 and wondered if it would live up to my misty water-colored memories.
Happily it did, and then some. Continue reading
Lincoln
Lincoln (film)
5/18/13 (Sat), Tokyo
I didn’t have high expectations for this film given the political sensibilities surrounding blacks and slavery along with Spielberg’s sappy PC tendencies. Still, while those fears were realized within about three minutes of the opening, the film as a whole proved enlightening and entertaining at the same time. Continue reading
Kinky Boots
Kinky Boots
4/28/13 (Sun), Broadway
I had been wary of this show given the preachy tendencies of its author Harvey Fierstein and the predictable arc of the story, which, without even knowing the movie, I could smell a mile away (boy meets drag queen, boy loses drag queen, boy learns to admire drag queens). But Fierstein is always good for a joke or two, and I was curious about the Cyndi Lauper (!) score. And having snagged a standing room seat at $27, the price was right. Continue reading
A Nobel for Dylan: Not all right
I’m a big Bob Dylan fan – I still have my LP and cassette versions of Blood on the Tracks among others, and that was the first CD I ever bought when the technology came out here in Japan – but a Nobel Prize in Literature? Since when is music literature? Unlike non-laureates Keats or Wordsworth, say, Dylan’s lyrics are written to be heard, not seen. These are not poems but lyrics, and that’s not a criticism. You can’t recognize one without the other. I thought the lesson was learned with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1932, which was presented to Of Thee I Sing lyricist Ira Gershwin and the show’s book writers while pointedly leaving out composer George Gershwin. (The Pulitzer people have corrected their ways since.) Those lyrics were not written in a vacuum; they’re inseparable from the music that accompanies them. It’s the same with Dylan, who of course writes both together. A Peace Prize would have made more sense – or maybe Chemistry in honor of the reaction that occurs when music and lyrics gel into one perfect whole. Dylan is amply deserving of something, maybe a new Nobel Prize for Culture. But let’s not put him on the level of Faulkner, any more than we should give Faulkner a prize for lyrics. Continue reading
Greasepaint (化粧)
化粧 2幕
5/26/09 (Tue), Tokyo
This is a frequently revived one-woman show by the prolific Inoue Hisashi that’s been around since the early 1980s starring Watanabe Misako. Besides Japan, it’s been performed by Watanabe in Paris, London and the U.S. in Japanese, and there was a brief English-language production in London with Frances de la Tour under the name Greasepaint (much more evocative than the usual English title Makeup). The show was sold out throughout the entire run, but I was fortunate to get a same-day seat.
Continue reading
Konpira Kabuki: Shunkan, Ninokuchi Village, The Zen Substitute (俊寛、新口村、身代座禅)
Konpira Kabuki: Shunkan, Ninokuchi Village, The Zen Substitute (俊寛、新口村、身代座禅)
4/18/09 (Sat), Konpira Kabuki, Kotohira City (Shikoku)
I finally got a chance to see Konpira Kabuki, the series performed in April each year at the foot of the famous Konpira Shrine in this small Shikoku town. The theater, Kanamaruza, dates from 1835 and is not only Japan’s oldest active Kabuki playhouse but the only extant theater from the Edo Era. I love regional Kabuki and their typical small old theaters, but this is a step way beyond that, featuring the biggest names in the business with full costumes and specially made sets and extremely high production values. Continue reading
Bunraku: Vendetta of a Samurai in Rags (敵討襤褸錦)
BUNRAKU：敵討襤褸錦 (Vendetta of a Samurai in Rags)
2/7/09 (Sat), 国立劇場
I had never even heard of this show, a 1736 drama translated variously as “Vendetta of a Samurai in Rags” and “The Outcast’s Revenge and the Brocade of Rags”, and there’s little information about it out there. So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It turns out to have been memorable for unexpected reasons. Continue reading
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