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| 20th-century photo of the Imperial Theater |
Stage shows are not something I've done a ton of research into, because any research I do tends to be unsatisfying; by their nature, stage plays are ephemeral and don't leave a lot of visual evidence unless somebody happens to record them (which wasn't being done too often in the era we're talking about here). But you're telling me Akihiko Hirata was in a production of The Sound of Music? Like, lonely goatherd, singing von Trapps, all that? We need to know more about this immediately.
Well, there's really not that much to be known, actually. This production was put on by Toho at the Imperial Theater [Teigeki] in Tokyo, which they own. It ran from July 5th to July 30th, 1975. Translation of the original lyrics was handled by Sumiko Takeuchi and Kotaro Taki, and the play was directed by Sadao Hirobe or possibly Koube, I'm not sure how his surname is read. I can find no information on either of the translators, but Hirobe/Koube seems to have directed one other play that is on record; this was a Toho adaptation of Yasunori Kawabata's Snow Country put on in 1970 at the Geijutsuza.
As for the cast: Kaoru Yodo played Maria, Tetsuro Sagawa was Captain von Trapp, and the rest of the roles were filled out by Yuki Okazaki, Maki Sawada, Asao Koike, Shinko Jō and others. Akihiko Hirata plays von Schreiber, the German naval admiral who attempts to summon George von Trapp to his new post in Bremmerhavn. In the 1965 film with Julie Andrews, von Schreiber is mentioned, but not seen; in stage shows, as far as I know, he has one scene, where he comes to the von Trapps' mansion to ask why Georg hasn't shown up to his post. Unfortunately he does not sing.
As soon as I found out about this performance, I did extensive internet scouring for any record of it at all, and I didn't find a whole lot, but I did find an online listing for some kind of booklet related to this specific show. The listing had no pictures, and I couldn't find any from other sources, so I really had no idea what it was exactly. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I bought it sight unseen.
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...as well as short interviews with the cast about the musical. This is the Yotsuya Kaidan production he mentions in the paragraph below; I have sunk many futile hours into trying to find out what the hell he was talking about when he said he "sang jazz with Kaoru Yodo and Teruo Hata" but I just can't find any record of it. (I will continue trying.)
I've saved the best for last. The thing that really cinched my decision to buy this booklet was that the listing mentioned a ticket stub. At the risk of sounding like a freak and a half... somebody probably had this on their person while they were sitting in the theater watching the play. That's, uh. That sure is something, isn't it.
The Teigeki has been renovated since 1975, but here's what it looks like now.
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| I'm not gonna lie to ya looking at this picture for too long and thinking about where my ticket stub has been makes me start sweating |
If anybody else is interested in researching stage plays, the resources I've found to be most useful are, for the Teigeki specifically, this webpage which lists the bare facts of all performances held there from 1911-2011. For Japanese theater in general, I would swear on archive.waseda.jp in a court of law, I think it's one of the best resources I've found for this kind of thing, but the UI is not terribly friendly to non-Japanese speakers; essentially all you need to do is enter a name (in kanji) of the play, performer or crewmember you're looking for and it will bring up all records relating to your keyword. It gives you a wonderful amount of data on basically every play ever, including kana for pronunciation.
That's all for now. Hope this was of some interest to somebody besides myself.
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