ウィキッド - The Broadway Musical Wicked (The SOB Revisit)
ウィキッド - The Broadway Musical Wicked (The SOB Revisit) - Shiki Theatre, Tokyo, Japan 東京*** (out of ****)
Some couples have their song. For the love of my life and me... well, let's just say we have our musical.
If you're a regular Steve On Broadway reader, you've probably already guessed that it happens to be Wicked. It was one of the very first tuners we saw as a couple -- our first time taking it in was just two days after the theatrical phenomenon opened on Broadway back in October 2003.
Whether it's our affinity for its ingenious inside-out twisting of "The Wizard Of Oz" fable we grew up on, or our hope from its message that different can be a virtue, or our love of its clever and often soaring tunes, Wicked has truly become "our musical."
So in that spirit, we traveled last week to our third international city this year -- London and Stuttgart came earlier -- to see the production in a third language.
On Christmas Eve, we saw ウィキッド - The Broadway Musical Wicked at Tokyo's Shiki Theatre. As in London and Stuttgart, I was amazed at how faithful to the original this incarnation is in staging, orchestrations, choreography and design. And while I don't speak a lick of Japanese (except to say "good afternoon," "good evening" and "thank you"), I was captivated by Miyuki Numao and Megumi Hamada, the duo originating the Japanese version's roles of Glinda and Elphaba, respectively.
Unlike in Germany, where I couldn't help but rethink the political allegories and how they were evocative of the Third Reich, I sat back and soaked in Tokyo's Wicked (although it wasn't lost on me that within one month's time, I was seeing this musical in the two primary nations that we fought in World War II).
As one of the most homogeneous societies on earth, the modern Japanese culture remains steeped in ancient tradition. With that in mind, I couldn't help but wonder whether the themes of ウィキッド - The Broadway Musical Wicked might well be viewed as a clarion call to be more accepting of other peoples and other cultures. Ironically, in this tightly knit society, an outlandish individual like Glinda with her platinum blonde coiffure would be nearly as unique in Japan as the green girl Elphaba would be everywhere.
Since Wicked is ultimately about looking at things -- especially other members of the human race -- another way, I was interested in measuring the extremely polite audience's response. With laughter and applause kept to a minimum level that would surely have had Stephanie Zimbalist seeing an oil painting, I was surprised to see more curtain calls for this staging of Wicked than any other I've ever seen before -- six curtain calls, plus an "encore" of "White Christmas" that finally brought the entire audience to its feet. Sharing this communal experience with a Japanese audience was certainly half the fun.
If you've never before seen one of your favorite Broadway shows in another language, you just might want to give it a try -- you'll likely come away thinking as I did about how they went about translating an entire show into another language and whether they were able to retain the same spirit, if not altogether the same trademark humor. Needless to say, in this Wicked, it appeared that many key laughlines were likely lost in translation, yet I couldn't help but be impressed at the arduous task this show's creators had before them to replicate as best they could a uniquely American show for a much wider audience.
In the end, that audience half a world away from home ultimately seemed equally impressed, further demonstrating the transcendent appeal of Wicked's tale.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for ウィキッド - The Broadway Musical Wicked Tokyo ticket information.
Related Stories:
Wicked - Die Hexen Von Oz (The SOB Revisit) (December 2, 2007)
Wicked To Finally Land In Oz During 2008 (May 16, 2007)
Wicked (The SOB Revisit) - London (April 17, 2007)
Wicked World (March 19, 2007)
Jaaku or Neikan? Wicked Set for Japanese Translation (July 24, 2007)
Labels: Broadway, Musical, Tokyo, Wicked, Wicked Die Hexen Von Oz, ウィキッド
posted by Steve On Broadway (SOB) @ Monday, December 31, 2007
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