Theater News

"Summer of Love" As You Like It Adaptation to Premiere in Tokyo

Tom Kitt and Michael Mayer team up for a new take on Shakespeare’s romantic comedy.

Composer Tom Kitt and director Michael Mayer reunite for a new adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It, premiere in Tokyo this winter.
Composer Tom Kitt and director Michael Mayer reunite for a new adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It, premiere in Tokyo this winter.
(© Tristan Fuge)

Toho Co., Ltd. has announced the world premiere of a new production of William Shakespeare’s romantic comedy As You Like It, opening in Tokyo in January 2017. The production is directed by Michael Mayer with original music by Tom Kitt, who reunite after previous collaborations on Broadway's American Idiot and Second Stage Theatre’s Everyday Rapture. Performances will run from January 4-February 4, 2017, at Toho’s Theatre Creation.

The new Shakespeare adaptation is set during the 1967 Summer of Love rock festival in San Francisco, placing it squarely in the counterculture phenomenon of the '60s. Kitt, who won Tony Awards for the score and orchestrations of Next to Normal in 2009, has composed an original folk-rock score to represent the era of peace, love, and happiness. Lorin Latarro (Waitress) will serve as choreographer for the "play with music," with Johanna McKeon as associate director.

"Shakespeare sets up two very distinct worlds," said Mayer. "Duke Frederic has created a world of great animosity, paranoia and unpleasantness. The other part of the story takes place in the Forest of Arden where Duke Senior and his compatriots are living a life of peace, joy and simple pleasures of pastoral life. I think about Richard Nixon and paranoid conservatism of his White House, then I think of the counterculture, the hippies and love children, who found a new way of living outside the confines of such an environment of the conservatism and political machinations."

Reon Yuzuki, a former top star of the all-female theater troupe Takarazuka Revue and the only Japanese cast member to star in the world premiere of Hal Prince’s musical compilation Prince of Broadway in 2015, will star as Rosalind. Japanese-American actor Julian Cihi, who appeared in the Broadway musical Doctor Zhivago and played Romeo in Classic Stage Company’s Romeo and Juliet opposite Elizabeth Olsen in 2013, will play Orlando de Boys.

Following the Tokyo premiere, the production will make stops at Umeda Arts Theater in Osaka (February 7-12), Rexxam Hall in Kagawa (February 15), and Canal City Theater in Fukuoka (February 24-26).