Interest
Your Lie in April London Stage Musical Ends Today
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The stage musical version of Naoshi Arakawa's Your Lie in April manga, running at The Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End, will end its run on Sunday August 11, not on September 21 as previously announced.
The play's final tickets are available here.
The WhatsOnStage website quotes the following comment from the producers:
"We are proud to have made history by bringing the first manga musical to the West End and to have given the opportunity for the first 100 per cent Asian and Southeast Asian cast to perform in a West End musical.... We are immensely proud of the show and the amazing work from the creative team, cast, crew, and musicians – and we thank them for their dedication and incredible work. It is particularly exciting to us how many people made Your Lie in April their first ever West End musical experience. And to our audiences who dressed the part and cheered them on, we say Bravo!”
Frank Wildhorn, an American composer known for songs sung by Whitney Houston ("Where Do Broken Hearts Go?") and Natalie Cole, scored the musical. Wildhorn also previously scored Death Note the Musical, and is a Broadway veteran of such hit musicals as Jekyll & Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Tracy Miller Schell and Carly Robyn Green co-wrote the lyrics with Wildhorn. Composer Jason Howland (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Jekyll & Hyde) was in charge of the arrangement and orchestration for the musical. Riko Sakaguchi (The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Mary and The Witch's Flower) wrote the original Japanese-language book for the musical, which was adapted into English by Rinne Goff. The director of the London production is Nick Winston.
Arakawa's original manga follows Kōsei Arima, a former child prodigy who lost his ability to play the piano when his mother died. His daily life is monochrome, but it begins to gain color when he meets a female violinist by chance. Kaori Miyazono is an audacious go-getter who is overflowing with personality. Enchanted by the girl, Kōsei begins to rediscover his love for piano when Kaori invites him to be her accompanist for a competition.
The manga debuted in Kodansha's Monthly Shonen Magazine in 2011, and ended in February 2015. The series won the Best Shōnen Manga category in Kodansha's 37th Annual Manga Awards in 2013. Kodansha Comics released the manga in North America, and released the 11th and final volume in December 2018.
A television anime series of Arakawa's manga premiered in 2014, animated by A-1 Pictures. The manga also received a live-action film, which opened in Japan in September 2016. An earlier non-musical stage play debuted in 2017.
