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.
Who cares if the psychologising is pound shop and the songs sound like rejected items from an Eighties AOR anthems playlist? When it all keeps moving forward so relentlessly, when its hero’s pain is eventually made palpable by a leading man doing a live classical recital on the revolving piano that sits centre stage, there are more important things than critical faculties. Let’s have tragic fun instead.
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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