Atami Murder Mystery (熱海殺人事件)

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熱海殺人事件 (Atami Satsujin Jiken)

24 December 2015 (Thurs), Tokyo

An extremely difficult ticket to get because of the pairing of veterans Hirata Mitsuru and Kazama Morio in this 1974 work for the first time in 33 years. They’ve always been linked in my mind because of their go-for-broke performances in the film of Tsuka Kohei’s other classic Kamata Koshinkyoku (蒲田行進曲) in the early 1980s (winning Japan Academy Awards for best actor and supporting actor in the process), and they were key members of Tsuka’s troupe in its heyday. So I wasn’t going to miss this. Continue reading →

Waste

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Waste

14 December 2015 (Mon), National Theatre

An early 20th-century play by Harley Granville Barker. An up-and-coming young politician eyed for a Cabinet post is working on bill to “disestablish” the Church of England, i.e., effectively separate church and state. He is irritated when his lover, a married woman, becomes pregnant; more so when she insists on having an abortion (he wants the child, in a reversal of the usual story); and yet more so when she ultimately commits suicide. But his conscience doesn’t seem to kick into gear until he is unceremoniously dumped by the party as the scandal mounts, which sets him into deep thinking and rash action. Continue reading →

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

12 December 2015 (Sat), West End

My second chocolate factory this trip after Menier. I hadn’t bothered to see this in any of my previous trips but went along this time with a friend, figuring it would be harmless enough. I imagined that they would darken it, being British and all, and knew they had jettisoned the movie music for a new score. That score, though, was by the Hairspray team, which had me a bit hopeful. Continue reading →

Funny Girl

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Funny Girl

11 December 2015 (Fri), Menier Chocolate Factory

This is the first big-time revival of the show since its initial run in the mid 1960s, meaning anyone who saw it as a teenager then would now be retirement age. The first question on anyone’s mind is: who’s going to play Barbra? Streisand’s long shadow over the role makes casting extremely tricky; the aborted attempt at a revival a few years ago in the US was to star a Streisand impersonator from Glee, which would have been a disaster – why get a second-hand Barbra instead of a first-rate something else? The situation applies as well to London, where Streisand repeated her success after her sensational Broadway run and just before the hugely popular movie. While it’s true the show ran for a year-and-a-half on Broadway after Streisand left (with the wonderful Mimi Hines), that was before Barbra became a legend and diva nonpareil with the film, to the extent that many people think that the show and songs were written specifically for her (they weren’t). I don’t think even Fanny Brice herself could be cast these days. So when tickets for the revival by the estimable Menier Chocolate Factory went on sale, the entire run was snapped up within 90 minutes by audiences curious to see the original musical and the actress who dared take on La Barbra. The show was announced for a West End transfer before it even opened, which signals a lot of confidence on the part of the producers. I managed with difficulty to snare a seat on a Friday night. Yeah, I was excited. Even this theater’s usual pitiful printed program didn’t dampen things.

The actress who sparked all the excitement was Sheridan Smith, a blonde British shiksa who’s about as far from a Jewish Brooklyn girl as high tea from gefilte fish. Even given the impressive range in her career – her two Oliviers are for Legally Blonde and Terence Rattigan’s wartime-era Flare Path­ – this one seemed a stretch. Still, the word was good, and I was ready for anything. Continue reading →

Pericles (Globe)

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Pericles

11 December 2015 (Fri), Sam Wanamaker Theatre

This was the latest staging at the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Theatre, the first in a series exploring Shakespeare’s four late romances. I can see why this is a lesser known play. It skates perilously on the line between far-fetched and ridiculous: shipwrecks abound, a dead body in a trunk fished from the sea is revived, armor lost at sea washes up on the shore with perfect timing, Pericles miraculously discovers his long-lost daughter (presumed dead) who then discovers her own long-lost mother (also presumed dead), all of whom happen to have ended up on the same sparsely populated island. Shakespeare has never shied from allowing magic and coincidence to do his work for him, but he really got carried away in this one. Maybe that had to do with his collaborator; the excellent program says that George Wilkins wrote the first part and Shakespeare the final three acts. In any case, it led to unintended laughter in the audience in some scenes, such as when the dead woman awakens or when the long-separated family find themselves improbably reunited. It must be hard to say those lines with a straight face. Continue reading →

Sunny Afternoon

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Sunny Afternoon

9 December 2015 (Wed), West End

This was a jukebox musical built around the music of The Kinks, but it was all effectively new for me since I don’t really know the group. The songs are sung in many cases as character material, which worked to an extent. The story was a bit by the numbers and not overly compelling, but it moved along smoothly enough. Continue reading →

Hangmen

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Hangmen

9 December 2015 (Wed), West End

Talk about gallows humor. This is the first new McDonagh play in London in a long while and the first to be set outside of Ireland. He is back to form and then some, scabrous and witty and outrageous. Continue reading →

The Mikado (ENO)

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The Mikado

6 December 2015 (Sun), ENO

I had loved this production four years earlier, and it was just as good the second time around – better, in fact, since I could read the subtitles this time, which helped immeasurably (I wonder if this is how Italians feel listening to opera). Great sets, colorful costumes, broad bright comedy, whimsical choreography, nutty elements like the headless waiters – this production really has it all. Continue reading →

The Homecoming

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The Homecoming

5 December 2015 (Sat), London Trafalgar Studios

A little Pinter goes long way with me, but this was the one play that my friend and I could agree on; I felt I should see it at some point anyway. As with most Pinter plays, it’s too stylized and obscure to make much sense, though the characterizations on their own were interesting. A brother, who has gone off to the US, brings his wife home for the first time after years of marriage and introduces her to his misogynistic widower dad, his hopeless two brothers and his chauffeur uncle. Thrown in the middle of a bullying, macho, frat-type environment, the wife uses her sexual wiles to manipulate all and gain control. Continue reading →

Farinelli and the King

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Farinelli and the King

5 December 2015 (Sat), West End

This was one tough ticket. I had tried for seats several times from Tokyo, but had only managed to get a standing-room seat for the evening show (and even those were eventually sold out). I went to the box office in the morning to see if I could find something better, and ended up snagging not just a seat but a house seat for the matinee – this was apparently the final day of performances, so the producers must have been holding back a number of tickets just in case. Great luck. And I even managed to sell my standing-room ticket to an extremely grateful guy. So all’s well that ends well. Continue reading →