Due to phenomenal demand, critically acclaimed Your Lie in April will transfer to the Harold Pinter Theatre for 12 weeks only. After a record-breaking sell-out concert launch at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, its producers (the same as smash-hit Death Note) are to stage the European premiere of one of the most popular romantic stories and greatest tearjerkers in manga history.
"This classical mixed musical masterpiece" (Curtain Call Reviews) will run 28th June – 21st September, releasing 5,500 £25 tickets for all preview performances.
Your Lie in April, is an adaption of a manga favourite story, brings to life the poignant story of Kōsei Arima, a young piano prodigy, and his inability to play following his mother’s death. He strikes a friendship with violinist Kaori Miyazono and she slowly encourages him to perform again. "Frank Wildhorn (composer of Jekyll & Hyde, Bonnie & Clyde and Death Note) “has a magic that will melt even the hardest heart" - London Living Large.
This adaption is based on Your Lie in April, a five-million-selling manga by Naoshi Arakawa published by KODANSHA LTD. ©Naoshi Arakawa/KODANSHA.
Directed and choreographed by Nick Winston, characters are Japanese but Americanised and schematic. Kōsei and Kaori are played with immense verve but there is little room for them to breathe and they are smothered by flat characterisation. Alongside them is a self-parodying high-school hunk (Dean John-Wilson) and Kōsei’s quietly tormented best friend (Rachel Clare Chan), both hastily sketched and overfamiliar.
Zheng Xi Yong’s classical piano playing in the lead role of Kо̄sei provides subtlety and real feeling in a welter of phony sentiment. Both he and Mia Kobayashi, making a bold debut as his inamorata Kaori though still at drama school, sing strongly. But the acting in Nick Winston’s production – the first West End musical with a cast entirely of South East Asian heritage – is relentlessly cartoonish.
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