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Video: Trailer for Your Lie in April: The Musical in London

posted on by Andrew Osmond
Musical version of Naoshi Arakawa's manga is running at London's Harold Pinter Theatre

The above trailer is for the stage musical version of Naoshi Arakawa's Your Lie in April (Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso) manga, which is now running at The Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End until September 21. Tickets are available here.

The trailer features extracts from two songs from the musical, "One Hundred Thousand Million Stars" and "Catch a Shooting Star." The London cast, as seen in the trailer, includes Mia Kobayashi as the violinist Kaori, Zheng Xi Yong as the troubled pianist Kosei, Rachel Clare Chan as Kosei's longtime friend Tsubaki and Dean John-Wilson as the sports star Ryota.

Zheng Xi Yong is a classical pianist who plays live on stage, while Dean John-Wilson previously took the role of L in two London concert performances of Death Note: The Musical in August 2023.

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.


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