Eden in Sin City: Adapting for the Musical Theater Body in Takarazuka Revue’s Ocean’s 11

Abstract

The Japanese all-female musical theater company, Takarazuka Revue, uses stylized performance patterns (kata) to depict gender and character onstage. This artificial method, descended from Japan’s all-male Kabuki theater, differs from the assumed realism of contemporary Broadway method acting. Through a study of Takarazuka Revue’s adaptation of the Hollywood film Ocean’s 11, this article argues that Takarazuka Revue’s performance method complements the inherent artificiality of musical theater song and dance and encourages the creation of new works that expand the traditions of the early to mid-twentieth-century Broadway musical. This points toward a broader understanding of global musical theater performance practices.

Keywords:

• Takarazuka Revue
• Ocean’s 11
• musical theater
• Broadway
• gender performance
• adaptation

Notes

* Its parent company has become Hankyū Hanshin holdings, a major conglomerate.

* By “musical theater,” I am referring to “book” musicals in which a story unfolds onstage through alternating dialogue, song, and dance. These differ from concerts and revue performances (which have no story line), from opera and through-sung musicals (which have no dialogue), and from ballet (which has no dialogue or song). This broad classification encompasses thousands of works globally; selected highlights, spanning the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries on the Broadway stage, include The Mulligan Guard Ball (1879), A Trip to Chinatown (1891), Little Johnny Jones (1904), Oh, Boy! (1917), No, No, Nanette (1925), Show Boat (1927), Anything Goes (1934), Oklahoma! (1943), Guys and Dolls (1950), My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story (1957), Hello, Dolly! (1964), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Company (1970), A Chorus Line (1975), Chicago (1975), Dreamgirls (1981), Rent (1996), The Producers (2001), Wicked (2003), and The Book of Mormon (2011).

* Revivals of Broadway works written before 1980 are especially prone to disjointedness, as present-day actors struggle to use the method to portray characters of a different time and place who also possess the fantastic powers of song and dance. In the 2018–2019 season, Encores’ productions of Call Me Madam (Lauren Worsham’s charming princess and Jason Gotay’s lovesick swain excepted), I Married an Angel, and High Button Shoes all suffered from performers’ inability to play anything other than their twenty-first-century selves in the book scenes, which made their shift to the fantasy world of song and dance uncomfortably awkward.

* Still other musicals are written as deliberate camp, encouraging the audience to laugh at the obvious artificialities of the musical form; examples include The Rocky Horror Show (1973), Little Shop of Horrors (1982), and The Drowsy Chaperone (2006). Such spoofs can be entertaining, but this self-reflexivity is ultimately damaging to the genre, for it ridicules the very fantastic qualities that define it.

* As exemplars of this artistic philosophy, Nathan mentions, for example, The Fencing Master (1892), Madeleine; or, The Magic Kiss (1895), The Belle of New York (1897), Babes in Toyland (1903), The Merry Widow (Hamburg 1906; Broadway 1907), The Chocolate Soldier (Vienna 1908; Broadway 1909), The Arcadians (1910), and The Sunshine Girl (1913).

† The Princess Theater shows, so named because their characteristic style is associated with productions given at the Princess Theater in New York City, included Nobody Home (1915), Go to It (1916), Have A Heart (1917), Leave It to Jane (1917), Oh, Lady, Lady! (1918), and Toot Sweet (1919). See Thomas Hischak, Oxford Companion to the American Musical (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

* In my study of Takarazuka Review’s 1996 production of the 1953 Broadway musical Can-Can, I argue that Takarazuka Review’s performance method is well suited to performing the integrated musical. See Elizabeth York, “Takarazuka Revue, Cole Porter’s Can-Can, and the Integrated Musical,” American Music 37, no. 3 (2019): 358–83.

† This is the most fully realized production, largely due to the strength of its cast, and it will be used for the description of Ocean’s 11 later in this paper.

* McMillan notes that the musical theater, through ensemble performance, dramatically suggests a feeling of community. See Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 81–82.

* It took time for the creative team to craft a suitably sinister number for Benedict: the 2011 number was not strong enough, so the 2013 and 2019 versions are reset with a new melody and a Latin beat.

† The finaletto is a classic first-act ending structure in operetta and musical theater. Various characters with differing points of view preternaturally assemble and express their conflicting perspectives, often by reprising numbers from earlier in the show. This was a common operetta structure (See for example, The Merry Widow, Hamburg, 1906, and Broadway, 1907), but it continued to be used semi-regularly through the 1960s; midcentury examples include West Side Story (1957) and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1961). See Jack Viertel, The Secret Life of the American Musical (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2016), 164–66.

* There is no revelation of Tess’s subconscious conflict in the film. The musical Tess, with her musical theater body, can express the feelings her film counterpart could not.

* In the Oklahoma! dream ballet, Laurey and Curley (and Jud, in the Broadway version) were played by dancers made up to resemble the singers who portrayed these characters throughout the rest of Oklahoma!. This reflects the specialization seen on Broadway through the mid-twentieth century, and it allowed de Mille to craft a technically demanding ballet. In Ocean’s 11, the same performers portray Danny, Tess, and Benedict throughout the entire production and are responsible for dancing, singing, and acting. SHUN’s Garden of Eden sequence thus cannot compare technically to de Mille’s ballet, as the performers are not specialized ballet dancers, but it still clearly shows de Mille’s conceptual influence.

* Rusty reveals that he plans to marry his girlfriend. With his share of the money and Benedict’s clear defeat, their family-owned nightclub is sure to be saved. The hope Danny instilled in “Never Give Up” has thus been fulfilled, which illustrates the musical theater hero’s fantastic power to transform his community.

1 “Hankyu Hanshin Holdings: Integrated Report 2019,” Hankyu Hanshin Kabushiki Gaisha [Hankyu Hanshin Stock Corporation], 2019, accessed August 8, 2020, https://www.hankyu-hanshin.co.jp/upload/irRelatedInfoEn/247.pdf.

2 Description of Takarazuka’s Ocean’s 11 is based on the following: Shūichirō Koike (book writer / lyricist) and Takeshi Ōta (composer), Ōshanzu 11 [Ocean’s 11], live performance recorded at Takarazuka Grand Theater, February 22, 2013, directed by Shūichirō Koike, (Takarazuka, Japan: Takarazuka Creative Arts, 2013), TCAD-397, DVD, 163 min. All romanizations and translations from Japanese to English are my own.

3 Leonie R. Stickland, Gender Gymnastics: Performing and Consuming Japan’s Takarazuka Revue (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2008); see also “The Takarazuka Revue’s Allure: What Is the Takarazuka Revue? The Secret Story Behind a Century of Spectacular Theater,” Official WebSite: Takarazuka Revue, English version, accessed August 8, 2020, http://kageki.hankyu.co.jp/english/about/index.html.

4 Dennis H. Atkin, “Takarazuka—Japan’s Premier Amusement Park and Modern Theater,” Selected Papers in Asian Studies: Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, no. 18 (1984): 2.

5 Stickland, Gender Gymnastics, 18.

6 Ibid., 19.

7 Koyama Shizuko, The Formation of Ryōsai Kenbo Thought, trans. Stephen Filler (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 11.

8 Makiko Yamanashi, A History of the Takarazuka Revue Since 1914 (Leiden: Global Oriental, 2012), 36.

9 Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 14.

10 “Takarazuka Daigekijō Takarazuka Bauhōru” [Takarazuka Grand Theater・ Takarazuka Bow Hall], Official WebSite: Takarazuka Revue, Japanese version, accessed August 12, 2020, http://www.kageki.hankyu.co.jp/theater/takarazuka/index.html; “Tokyo Takarazuka Kageki” [Tokyo Takarazuka Theater], Official WebSite: Takarazuka Revue, Japanese version, accessed August 8, 2020, http://www.kageki.hankyu.co.jp/theater/tokyo/index.html.

11 See Takarazuka’s official YouTube channel for clips from many recent productions illustrating the general Takarazuka style: “TakarazukaRevueCompany,” official YouTube channel, YouTube, accessed December 26, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/user/TRCofficialchannel/videos.

12 “About Us,” Official WebSite: Takarazuka Revue, English version, accessed August 8, 2020, http://kageki.hankyu.co.jp/english/troupe/index.html.

13 Naomi Miyamoto, “The Takarazuka Revue: Its Star System and Fans’ Support,” in Made in Japan: Studies in Popular Music, ed. Tōru Mitsui (New York: Routledge, 2014), 28–29.

14 Ian Buruma, Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, Drifters and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 114.

15 “About TMS,” Takarazuka Music School, English version, accessed August 8, 2020, http://www.tms.ac.jp/english/about.html.

16 Karen Nakamura and Hisako Matsuo, “Female Masculinity and Fantasy Spaces,” in Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa, ed. James E. Roberson and Nobue Suzuki (London: Routledge, 2006), 59–76.

17 Jessica Hester, “Japanese Women / American Men: National Identities and the Takarazuka Revue,” in Portrayals of Americans on the World Stage: Critical Essays, ed. Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2009), 191–200.

18 Robertson, Takarazuka, 12–13.

19 Stickland, Gender Gymnastics, 113–14.

20 Ibid., 114.

21 Stickland, Gender Gymnastics, 113.

22 Ibid., 108.

23 Sonoko Azuma, “Multilayered Performers: The Takarazuka Revue as Media,” in Shōjo Across Media: Exploring “Girl” Practices in Contemporary Japan, ed. Jacqueline Berndt, Kazumi Nagaike, and Fusami Ogi (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 269, cites Moriaki Watanabe, Kyokō no shintai: Engeki ni okeru shinwa to hanshinwa [The Fictional Body: Myth and Anti-myth in Performance] (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1978), 26.

24 Yamanashi, A History, 36.

25 Stickland, Gender Gymnastics, 115.

26 “About Us,” Official WebSite: Takarazuka Revue.

27 Miyamoto, “The Takarazuka Revue,” 28. For an example of fan culture surrounding a Top Star, see “DREAM GIRLS | Women Make Movies | Clip,” YouTube video, 5:03, posted by Women Make Movies, April 11, 2009, https://youtu.be/i8YLKo8Nzsg.

28 Azuma, “Multilayered Performers,” 217–73.

29 Ibid.

30 Yamanashi, A History, 111.

31 Ibid., 108.

32 Stacy Wolf, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 10.

33 Dominic Symonds and Millie Taylor, “Part Six: Performativity as Practice,” in Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance, ed. Dominic Symonds and Millie Taylor, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 209.

34 See, for example, Joe Deer, Acting in Musical Theatre: A Comprehensive Course (London: Routledge, 2008); Tracey Moore, Acting the Song: Performance Skills for the Musical Theatre (New York: Allworth Press, 2008); and David F. Ostwald, Acting for Singers: Creating Believable Singing Characters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

35 Mary Ann Smart, “Resisting Rossini, or Marlon Brando plays Figaro,” The Opera Quarterly 27, no. 2–3 (spring-summer 2011): 160.

36 Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 21.

37 Ibid.

38 Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 12.

39 Ibid., 14.

40 Azuma, “Multilayered Performers,” 269; cites Moriaki Watanabe, Engeki to wa nanika [What Is Performance?] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1990), 29.

41 George Jean Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year, 1946–1947 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 60–61.

42 Max Beerbohm, “At the Gaiety,” Saturday Review, October 30, 1909, reprinted in Victorian Dramatic Criticism, ed. George Rowell (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016), 343.

43 Geoffrey Block, “Integration,” in The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, ed. Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, and Stacy Wolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 97–110.

44 Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from “Show Boat” to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Block, “Integration”; Gerald Bordman, American Operetta: From “H.M.S. Pinafore” to “Sweeney Todd” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); George Jean Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year, 1947–1948 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948); Richard Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983).

45 Block, Enchanted Evenings; David Ewen, The Story of America’s Musical Theater (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1961); Thomas S. Hischak, Word Crazy: Broadway Lyricists from Cohan to Sondheim (New York: Praeger, 1991); Ethan Mordden, Beautiful Mornin’: The Broadway Musical in the 1940s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages (New York: Random House, 1975); Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway (New York: Schirmer Books, 1990); Max Wilk, OK! The Story of “Oklahoma!” (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2002).

46 McMillin, The Musical as Drama, 2–3.

47 Ibid., 42.

48 Koichi Kobayashi, “Goaisatsu” [Welcome], theater program for Ōshanzu 11 [Ocean’s 11], Takarazuka Grand Theater, Takarazuka, Japan, November 11, 2011–December 13, 2011.

49 Shūichirō Koike, “Kanjuku: Ranju Tomu no Hanagumi [Ōshanzu 11]” [Full Maturity: Flower Troupe’s Ranju Tomu Ocean’s 11], theater program for Ōshanzu 11 [Ocean’s 11], Takarazuka Grand Theater, Takarazuka, Japan, February 8, 2013–March 11, 2013.

50 “Ocean’s 11,” Official WebSite: Takarazuka Revue, Japanese version, accessed August 8, 2020, https://kageki.hankyu.co.jp/revue/2019/oceanseleven/index.html.

51 “Ōshanzu 11: Cast,” theater program for Ōshanzu 11 [Ocean’s 11], November 11, 2011–December 13, 2011.

52 Terry Teachout, “The Broadway Musical Crisis, Commentary Magazine (July/August 2014), accessed August 8, 2020, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/terry-teachout/the-broadway-musical-crisis/.

53 Ocean’s 11, directed by Lewis Milestone (1960; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008), DVD.

54 Ocean’s 11, directed by Steven Soderbergh (2001; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2007), DVD, all quotations transcribed by the author; “Tell me this is not about her clip,” YouTube video, from the Warner Brothers 2001 film Ocean’s 11, 0:20, posted by Elizabeth York, December 26, 2020, https://youtu.be/qkfI2gqB9ew.

55 Mark Gallagher, Another Steven Soderbergh Experience: Authorship and Contemporary Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 158–63.

56 Elvis Mitchell, “FILM REVIEW; For the New Rat Pack, It’s a Ring-a-Ding Thing,” The New York Times, December 7, 2001.

57 William A. Everett, Sigmund Romberg (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2007), 42–45, 216–17; Joseph P. Swain, The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 20–21, 265.

58 Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11, “Fate City clips (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11),” YouTube video, 1:17, from TCAV-397, posted by Elizabeth York, December 13, 2020, https://youtu.be/J-M6VOl37wU.

59 Paul R. Laird, History of the American Musical: An Oxford Handbook of the American Musical, Volume 1, ed. Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, and Stacy Wolf (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 53; Jack Viertel, The Secret Life of the American Musical (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2016), 52–72.

60 Shūichirō Koike and Takeshi Ōta, “Musical Number,” theater program for Ōshanzu 11 [Ocean’s 11], November 11, 2011–December 13, 2011, 12.

61 Ibid.; Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11; “Eden clip (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11),” YouTube video, 1:37, from TCAV-397, posted by Elizabeth York, December 21, 2020, https://youtu.be/cXqHZz2OzaI.

62 Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11.

63 Ocean’s 11, Soderbergh; “You’re a Thief and a Liar,” YouTube video, 0:24, from the Warner Brothers 2001 film Ocean’s 11, posted by Elizabeth York, December 26, 2020, https://youtu.be/xn-1rMwcXPk.

64 Ibid.

65 Viertel, The Secret Life, 80.

66 York, “Takarazuka Revue,” 373.

67 Koike and Ōta, “Musical Number,” 2011, 13; Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11; “Ano Koro no Watashi clip (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11),” YouTube video, 2:54, from TCAV-397, posted by Elizabeth York, December 13, 2020, https://youtu.be/SewCyZYKUvg.

68 Koike and Ōta, “Musical Number,” 2011, 13; Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11; “Ano Koro no Watashi clip (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11).”

69 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Oklahoma!, in American Musicals 1927–1949: The Complete Books & Lyrics of Eight Broadway Classics, ed. Lawrence Maslon (New York: Library of America, 2014), 240.

70 Koike and Ōta, “Musical Number,” 13.

71 Laird, History of the American Musical, 53; Viertel, The Secret Life, 52–72.

72 Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11.

73 Ocean’s 11, Soderbergh; “This guy is as smart as he is ruthless,” YouTube video, 0:22, from the Warner Brothers 2001 film Ocean’s 11, posted by Elizabeth York, December 26, 2020, https://youtu.be/ynX6TzGsE7I.

74 Koike and Ōta, “Musical Number,” 14; Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11; “Yume wo Uru Otoko clip (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11),” YouTube video, 0:54, from TCAV-397, posted by Elizabeth York, December 14, 2020, https://youtu.be/nMx6oBlBOd8.

75 Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11; “Jackpot clip (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11),” YouTube video, 1:27, posted by Elizabeth York, February 4, 2021, https://youtu.be/w3Jt9Kt4FaQ.

76 Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11; “Dream Sequence clips (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11),” YouTube video, 1:43, from TCAV-397, posted by Elizabeth York, December 14, 2020, https://youtu.be/Rr0Qd0K1e_g.

77 De Mille replicated her choreography for the film: Oklahoma!, directed by Fred Zinneman (1955; Beverly Hills, CA: 20^th Century Fox, 1999), DVD; “Oklahoma!—Dream Ballet (Complete),” YouTube video, 14:51, posted by “DFDalton1962,” November 28, 2013, https://youtu.be/2D1loAVwiMc.

78 Liza Gennaro and Stacy Wolf, “Dance in Musical Theater,” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, ed. Nadine George-Graves (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 148–68.

79 Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!, 263–64.

80 Kara Anne Gardner, Agnes de Mille: Telling Stories in Broadway Dance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 35.

81 Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma!, 234.

82 Hammerstein essay for Dance, Box 33, Oscar Hammerstein II collection, Library of Congress, quoted in Todd S. Purdum, Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution (New York: Henry Holt, 2019), 85.

83 Block, “Integration,” 88–89.

84 Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, and Richard Stilgoe, The Phantom of the Opera [vocal selections] (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 1987), 31.

85 Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11.

86 Jessica Sternfeld, The Megamusical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 258–59.

87 Yamanashi, A History, 134.

88 Koike and Ōta, Ōshanzu 11.

89 Ibid.; “Final Scene (from Takarazuka Revue’s 2013 Flower Troupe production of Ocean’s 11),” YouTube video, 0:53, from TCAV-397, posted by Elizabeth York, December 22, 2020, https://youtu.be/Iwj1DE3g5ko.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth York

ELIZABETH YORK ([email protected]) is the electronic resources librarian on the faculty of Rutgers University Libraries. She holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she studied bibliography with Donald Krummel. Her research interests include Tin Pan Alley, the early to mid-twentieth-century Broadway musical, and their global legacy. She has presented her work at conferences of the Music Library Association, the Society for American Music, and the International Musicological Society, and her research has been published in American Music and Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association.