On the Flower Road

On Saturday I went to Takarazuka (“Again?!!” yes, again) to see another grand theatre performance, this one called ‘Me and My Girl.’ The show itself is based off of a British one with, I believe, the same name, about an aristocratic English house that discovers the only heir available is an illegitimate son of the former patriarch who has grown up in the wrong part of London. He comes complete with no sense of how to act in polite society, a cockney accent (approximated in Japanese as a very informal sort of dialect, I believe) and a girlfriend from the same part of town. The show is only nominally about trying to reform the future heir, choosing to focus more on his relationship with his girlfriend, Sally, who is not deemed a fit companion for a future Count of Hereford. Before the show, my friend and I decided to enjoy the cherry blossom trees that line the ‘hana no michi’ or ‘flower road’ that leads from the train station to the theatre. They were all in full bloom, and since we had lovely weather we sat awhile underneath them and ate ‘hanami dango’ or ‘flower-viewing dumplings’, which are sweet glutinous rice cakes in three flavours (sakura, which is pink, a white one, and a green one that is some sort of sweet herb) arranged in a stick. We also ate lunch at a little café near the station, which was England-themed. The play was extremely fun, and was my first time seeing live one of the two-act variety of Takarazuka play. You might remember this from descriptions of other shows, but frequently the first act is a play with a plot of sorts, whereas the second is a revue. In the two-act type, the play itself is, of course, two acts like almost all plays that I’ve gone to see in the US. The very end, however, is devoted to revue-like numbers set to different versions of the music from the preceding play. The intermission falls between the regular Act1/ Act2 break, with the revue beginning directly after the usual end of the play. Interestingly enough, this was the first play for the newly-graduated class of the Takarazuka Music School. This meant that before the play started their class representatives gave a little speech (nothing fancy, just about how they were going to try their best and work hard) and sang a song called ‘Our Takarazuka’. At the end of the first act there was, of course, a big feel-good number with the whole cast. I was sitting in a better seat than usual, but I was still on the second floor. Now, the view from the second floor is still great, but one does feel a little disconnected from the action onstage, and especially envious when the actresses step into the aisles. As such, I was extremely surprised when, in the big first act finale, the new graduates poured out into the central aisle of the second floor seats! I could not have been sitting any closer. It was very exciting to be brought into the atmosphere, and it was the closest I’ve ever been to a professional actress of any sort, though I had to remind myself afterwards that they were probably about 19 years old. The part of the show that the new people appear in is actually always the big can-can line-dance in the revue, and they did a great job, I felt. There was, however, one little mishap: one of the dancers’ shoes flew off during the middle of the number. Luckily it flew all the way into the orchestra pit, because if it had landed onstage it would have been a hazard to the dancers and would have to be removed by someone, and if it had gotten all the way to the audience it could have taken someone’s eye out. To the girl’s credit, I didn’t see her miss a beat, she just kept dancing with one shoe on as if nothing had happened. After the show we waited around a bit for some of the actresses to leave the theatre, but some of them must have snuck around the back or something, because not nearly enough people came out where all of the fans were standing.
-The flower road is definitely worth seeing in spring. I’ll have to be back again.
-I had seen some of the actresses from this troupe when I went to see ‘Tales of Hoffman’ a couple months before, and it was exciting to see people I recognized on stage, even if they were in (much) smaller parts. This really is part of the fun of going to the smaller shows.
-If you can find used Takarazuka magazines at Book-off or some other general used book store then they’ll be about 100yen, but at the official used Takarazuka goods store they are about 380yen. Back issues at the gift shop, which are new, are 600yen.
-After the run of this show, the lead female-role actress for the troupe is retiring, which doesn’t mean a lot to me, as I’ve only ever seen her in this one show. I am, however, sad to see that one of the older actresses (she debuted in 1983) is retiring after the run as well. I’d seen that particular actress in this show (where she was very good), but also in my DVD of ‘Phantom’, where she played Carlotta extremely well.
-The people at the okonomiyaki place closest to the grand theatre are really nice, and the atmosphere is cute, but their okonomiyaki is not very big or thick, and tends to take awhile.