The Lobster Dance

Photo from the Asahi Shimbun.

I’ve been a Hanagumi and Tsukigumi fan from the start of my experiences with Takarazuka, but this year it seems like I keep ending up at Soragumi shows. I started this year with Soragumi (Casablanca, 『カサブランカ』) and I ended it with Soragumi (For Whom the Bell Tolls,『誰がために鐘は鳴る』). Even though I didn’t have feelings one way or the other about the group when I rang in the new year, I did remember how much I had liked the top star, Oozora Yuuhi (大空祐飛), in Tsukigumi’s Rome at Dawn (『暁のローマ』). Rome at Dawn is a rock opera based on Julius Caesar, and, despite being a strange (but loveable) show, it was a showcase of rising stars. I don’t know why, but most of the named roles ended up doing well for themselves in the theatre. Hiromu Kiriya (霧矢大夢), who played Antonius, became the top star of Tsukigumi after Sena Jun left, and I came to really like her. The other person who had really impressed me in that show was Yuuhi in the role of Cassius.

Photo from Sumire Style. Antonius (Hiromu Kiriya), left, vs. Cassius (Oozora Yuuhi) and Brutus (Sena Jun), right.

Yuuhi’s charm point, as I learned, is that her stage personality is the definition of 渋い. There’s not really a single good word for this in English—it can mean cold, astringent, or aloof—but, in the case of acting, one could sum it up as “Humphrey Bogart.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but Yuuhi is almost always cast in these kind of roles, probably because she’s so good at it. She was the perfect choice for Rick in Casablanca; she played a perfectly stoic Horatio Nelson in Trafalgar (『トラファルガー』); and, in the last play I went to see, she played Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls with the same kind of 渋さ I’ve come to expect.

(Caveat: I haven’t read Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls or seen the movie. I suspect Takarazuka has romanticized certain points a bit, but I’ll have to get my hands on a copy of the book before I can confirm this.)

I really thought the show was brilliant—and I was surprised that it had some humorous points, too, given my impressions of Hemingway and Yuuhi. Robert Jordan is a American professor of Spanish who decides to go to Spain to fight the Fascists in 1937 in the Spanish Civil War. He becomes skilled at explosives and is sent on an assignment to blow up a bridge. At the camp with some of the Spanish resistance, he meets Maria (Nono Sumika 野々すみ花), a refugee from a village outside Madrid, and they fall in love. However, as the time grows near to set the plan in action, there’s a constant sense that they probably won’t survive this mission.

My favorite thing about the play was the costumes—tall boots, bright colors, interesting fabrics. It looked like the guerrillas had just thrown on whatever they had to stay warm, but it looked really cool and put together.*  It was an interesting change from all the tuxedos and pre-20th century costumes I’ve seen at the theatre.

Photo from Le Cinq vol. 123, 誰がために鐘は鳴る

I was also surprised to see that Nono Sumika’s hair had been cut for the role. Even though the cast will get hair-cuts and dye their hair for their roles, musumeyaku almost always wear wigs for short-haired female roles; recently, Ranno Hana (蘭乃はな) had a wig that looked like Audrey Hepburn’s short hair-cut for her role in Sabrina (『麗しのサブリナ』). However, Nono’s real hair was actually cropped for this. It might have been because of concerns about the wig slipping in a key scene—Maria is concerned that Robert thinks she’s bad looking because she’s cut off her hair, but, in an attempt to reassure her of her attractiveness, he whips out a pick-up line than my friend and I were laughing about all day—“Can I touch your hair?”—and then proceeds to caress her hair.

The whole cast was great in this show—the flamenco dances were well done and fun, and I found myself getting invested in the characters. I also felt an affinity with Robert Jordan as a foreigner—he’s constantly referred to as “the Englishman,” despite being American; he’s not accepted by some members of the Resistance because he’s a “foreigner”; and a lot of the people at his camp are angry when he and Maria get together. Clearly, I’m not fighting a war, but I can understand what it feels like to be treated that way–like an outsider in a country I’ve spent years studying.

One particular scene regarding this sense of Robert’s Otherness happens at the camp. Maria offers to go make him some dinner, saying she’ll just eat afterward. Robert tells her he’ll wait and that “in my country, men and their wives eat together,” to which Pablo, one of the guerrillas, mockingly responds, “Pfft, in your country, do the men wear skirts, too?” And then, in typical Yuuhi fashion, without missing a beat, she retorts, “No, that’s Scotland.”

Photo from 宝塚GRAPH (2010-12). Hiromu Kiriya at a dress rehearsel for The Gypsy Baron (Der Zigeuner Baron, ジプシー男爵)

Yuuhi’s talent at portraying really 渋い characters has another charm to it. She’ll spend much of her time on stage being serious and brooding, but then she’ll smile, and it’s like a beam of sunshine piercing a cloud. In contrast, Kiriyan’s charm is that she’s given roles that play up her sunny, cheerful, and cheeky stage personality: characters like Percival Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel and Sterk Barinkay in The Gypsy Baron.

Photo from Le Cinq vol. 23 (誰がために鐘が鳴る）

Yuuhi is cast as the opposite. Her characters seem to have a weight on their shoulders, to have a lot of regrets, to have shut themselves off from the world. But then something happens in the play or the dance revue, and she lets loose that dazzling smile. It reminds me of working with a professor who did not give praise lightly—when you were praised, you knew he really, really meant it. And when Yuuhi smiles, it feels so genuine that you can’t help but smile, too.

Bonus photo:

Photo from the Asahi Shimbun. Oozora Yuuhi in the dance revue Funky Sunshine! (ファンキー・サンシャイン)

Notes

*Japanese fashion seems very similar—young women and men who looked like they just gathered whatever was in the front of the closet and yet it somehow works….